Sad Nick
by FriteWag
Summary: The continuation from Sad Judy. Against his better judgment, Nick agrees to tag along with Judy on a trip to Bunnyburrows to meet her parents. Naturally, Stu is less than pleased that his daughter has thrown her lot in with a fox, of all animals. contains swearing and sexual themes.
1. Chapter 1

_Nick,_

 _I got another package today-three grand this time. the notes were all balled up and crumpled and I knew in my gut that it was you who sent them. Sally from next door tells me I'm losing my marbles - but a mother knows these things._

 _You didn't give me an address to follow or a postcode to send this to, so I guess I'm writing this for the sake of it._

 _I burned the money, Nick. All of it. I can guess how you go about things nowadays and I know you didn't get ahold of that money honestly. Well, I don't want any part of it. I don't want to know what you're getting up to out there and I don't want your dirty money._

 _I just want you to come home. I'm not mad about those stupid cons you pulled or those nasty things you said. Just come home. Come back to me. It's been twenty years and there hasn't been a day I wasn't worried sick about you. I miss my little trooper._

 _I wish I had a way to send you this,_

 _Mom._

* * *

The train jostled angrily on its tracks, and Nick found himself awed once again by just how heavy a sleeper Judy was.

The bunny led up against him, making a pillow out of his shoulder. Her ears wilted behind her head, twitching in synchronization with her deafening snores. It would've been sort of cute if she wasn't currently drooling on him. He briefly weighed the pros and cons of shaking her awake, settling on leaving her alone. Judes had had herself a hard day, and she deserved a little bit of shuteye...

That, and Judy hated being woken up, and a grumpy Judy wasn't really something he wanted to deal with right now.

The train was practically empty apart from the two of them and a couple more bunnies who were less-than-talkative. Outside the sky was black, and Zootopia was naught but a greasy, neon smudge staining the horizon. Nick couldn't stop his stomach from turning whenever he looked at it.

He'd never left the city before. For all his life his world had been skyscrapers and slums, concrete jungles and glass behemoths.

When he looked at it from this distance, his world seemed pretty damned insignificant. When compared to the thickets of forest and jagged, moonlit clumps of mountain which surrounded it, the city was a mouse in the company of giants. Nick found the size and scope of it all, in no uncertain terms, terrifying.

He held Judy tighter in a vain attempt to quell the pileup of anxiety weighing down the pit of his stomach. He hated this. He hated this so, so much. He hated leaving the city, he hated train rides and he hated the sideway glances he was getting from all of the other tight-lipped bunny passengers.

The latter was what pissed him off most of all. He considered himself a talkative guy - in fact he prided himself on it - so when Judy had nodded off he'd tried his luck at mingling with the others. He'd gotten naught from them but the occasional 'hello'. Yeah, turns out foxes weren't very popular among rabbits. Which was just dandy, because right now they were on their way to a place practically wall-to-wall with them. Great. Wonderful. Fuckin' A.

...

"Crap," he grumbled to himself, not for the first time this night. When Judy had brought up the idea of meeting her parents, Nick had been ecstatic. He couldn't fathom why. The two of them had been together for the better part of a month and he'd still been high on that happy feeling that only finding love could give you, so maybe he'd made the fatal mistake of being optimistic. His dad had always told him that love could make you stupid, and like a damned moron he hadn't addressed any of the problems until it was way too late.

It was about the time Nick stepped onto the train that all the little niggles and problems reared their ugly heads: he hated travelling, Bunnyborrow was full of country bumpkins who _'didn't like yer kind 'round here'_ , the wifi was shit and, perhaps worst of all, Judy's parent's didn't have a clue that they were dating.

That last one came as an especially shitty surprise to him.

Apparently Judy had been so caught up between dealing with her cop duties and 'committing to their relationship', as she put it, that she simply forgot to mention it in her weekly phone calls home. Honestly, he just reckoned that she wanted to put off telling her dad that she was screwing around with a predator. From what she'd said of her father, Nick gathered that he hadn't been the biggest fan of foxes up until recently, and somehow Nick doubted that he'd take too kindly to finding out that one was banging his daughter.

He sighed, woefully taking in the rolling hills of the countryside. Zootopia had disappeared over the horizon a while ago. He missed its artificial, orange glow already. Shit, why did he agree to this?

"Stop being so nervous," muttered Judy, and Nick realised only now that she'd stopped snoring. She kept her head led against his shoulder, eyes still closed, feigning sleep.

"Hmm?"

"I said stop being so nervous," she repeated, and this time she shuffled closer, burying her head into the soft crevice of his neck.

"Me, nervous?" he said with a feigned disbelief. "C'mon, Judes."

"I can feel you shaking," she said with a yawn. Dammit, why'd she have to be so good at reading him? Her arms moved around him, squeezing at his midsection. She stretched briefly before settling into him. "Stop it... You make a better pillow when you're still."

Despite being determined to be miserable, that got a small giggle out of him. "When did you get so funny?"

"I learn from the best. Now seriously, calm down," she cracked open an eye to look at him, throwing a reassuring smile his way. He wished he could tell her just how better that made him feel. "Mom and Dad are going to love you..."

"Yeah, I'm sure they're gonna be overjoyed to find out that a washed-up conman of a fox has gone and bagged their prettiest daughter. Why, I wouldn't be surprised if your parents rushed us to the altar as soon as we get off this train." he ranted with no small amount of sarcasm.

Judy raised a brow. "Prettiest daughter? You aren't trying to butter me up with compliments again, are you?"

"Is it working?"

"No," she grunted before closing her eyes and burying her face into his fur to hide the red bloom of her blush. "... Well, maybe... Look, you don't know my parents like I do - they aren't going to point the finger and call you a bad guy just because you _used_ to be."

"Gee, thanks,"

"Not that you ever were one!" placated Judy. "It's just that some people might see it that way... Namely everyone... L-look, nobody is going to judge you because of stuff that happened in the past. I mean, my Dad is business partners with the kid who used to bully me at school. He really isn't the judgemental type."

Nick rolled his eyes. 'Not the judgmental type.' This _was_ the guy who gave her a can of anti-fox spray when she first came to Zootopia, right? Yeah, 'not the judgmental type' his furry, orange ass.

Judy must've sensed his scepticism, because the kiss she placed on his cheek was full of reassurance. "Trust me," she said. "you'll do fine. Now lemmie get back to sleep. It's late, I'm tired... Wake me up-" *yawn* "-When we get there..."

"Would you like a bedtime story?" he joked, earning himself a weak elbow to the ribs from Judy.

"Shut up... And hug me some more, it's cold..."

He complied, gathering her up in his arms and coddling her to his chest. She sighed blissfully, the rhythm of her breathing softening as she slept. Damn. He'd spent the better part of his life out on the unforgiving streets cutting deals with mobsters, thieves and pickpockets, but somehow Judy always managed to find that backdoor into his heart.

With a weary huff he led back into his seat and closed his eyes, taking whatever comfort he could in Judy's embrace. The weight of all his worrying and panicking lifted itself from his shoulders, and all of a sudden he was more tired than he had been in weeks. He nestled his nose between Judy's ears, content to fall asleep to the flowery smell of her fur...

And then Judy began to snore.

* **SNRRRRRK... FUFUFUFUFUFUH... SNRRRRK...***

... Whatever. Sleep was overrated anyways.


	2. Chapter 2

_Dear Nick,_

 _I thought about you yesterday. I imagined you alive and well, kicking back on some exotic beach, sipping on whatever it is you kids drink nowadays. The sun was setting over the ocean and the sky was a wonderful shade of pink and you had some pretty girl on your lap, gushing over how wonderful her and your day had been. I haven't been able to get it out of my head since._

 _I wish it never crossed my mind, because now I've made a habit out of it. Some days you're living the high life in some fancy-pancy skyline hotel, and others you're sleeping in the gutters of some shot-up old gang neighbourhood, surviving on hand-outs and whatever you happen to find in the garbage._

 _Yesterday you were dead, and I had to take a couple of those pills I'd picked up from the pharmacist to calm myself down._

 _Where are you? Where did you go? Why can't you just come back and let me say sorry? Do you resent me? Hate me? The questions just keep running around inside my head, chasing each others tails and making me sick with worry. I wish I had a way to make them stop._

 _Wherever you are, I hope you're safe, my little trooper. Safe and making your way back to me._

 _All the love in the world,_

 _Mom._

* * *

Through some divine miracle Nick had managed to snag himself a couple fleeting hours of sleep before the jolt of the train stopping woke him up again. Judy stirred in his arms, already brimming with energy. Despite her aversion to being woken up early, Judy had always been a morning person - given that she'd had herself a full nights sleep beforehand.

Nick was not.

Nick was the antithesis of 'morning person'. He was the anti-morning person. When he woke up, the first thing he wanted to do was find a quiet corner and nod off back to sleep. Sadly, the sunlight shining through his eyes made that something of an impossibility. That, and Judy wasn't exactly the type who'd just let him lay about. She tugged at his arm, unaware that he was already awake.

"C'mon, sleepy-head, we've got places to be!"

Nick went to snap at her, but when he opened his eyes and saw her excited smile, he just couldn't bring himself to get angry. She was practically bouncing on the spot, like a kid on Christmas eve. He huffed, reluctantly dragging himself to his feet. The sun shone brilliantly in the sky, making promises of a wonderful day. Somehow he doubted that'd be the truth.

"Alright, alright, I'm up." he rumbled groggily, swaying on his feet. Judy skipped ahead of him, eagerly beckoning him to follow. He trudged along after her, dragging two suitcases full of luggage along with him. It wasn't until he stepped off of the train that it struck him just how... Different things were.

Back in Zootopia, things were always moving. The streets were an endless bustle, clogged with traffic, and the air was always fermented with all those city-smells he'd long since gotten used to; cigarette smoke, gasoline, wet tarmac, that nameless, greasy smell which hung around those neglected alleyways and run-down crannies of civilisation he used to frequent...

Here, the boarding platform was practically silent apart from the occasional murmur from the departing passengers and the soft whisper of the wind. The air smelled... Clean. Like freshly cut grass. There weren't any skyscrapers or apartment buildings looming over him or oppressive billboards hogging every inch of open space and toting some contrived advertisement he'd seen a dozen times before.

There was a smattering of housing around the train station, complimented by a generous amount of fields, rich with flowers. Off in the distance he could make out farmland, a combine harvester gradually churning its way through the crops. He could just about hear its mechanical whir from here.

And other than that, there was, well, nothing much.

...

He'd never seen 'nothing much' before.

Back in the city you couldn't walk ten paces before you came face to face with some brand store or chain restaurant or apartment complex. Here he could walk for miles in any direction and find nothing but roaming meadows, complimented by the occasional cottage. He'd never seen an openness like that before. People always referred to places like Zootopia as 'The Big City', but Nick reckoned that size-wise, these wide, rolling meadows put anything Zootopia had to shame. The sheer vastness of it all was staggering.

"Nick, are you alright?" Judy lay a paw on his arm, snapping him out of his stupor.

"Yeah," he said, allowing himself a slow, calming breath. "Never better."

He'd have loved to let it go at that, but Judy, being the persistent little bunny she was, had other plans.

"Y'know if you're still nervous about meeting my parents-"

"I'm not nervous. Really, I'm not." he wasn't. He was terrified. There was a cocktail of culture shock and frenzied nerves brewing away within him, and it took all of his willpower not to go scrambling back onto the train and trying to ride it all the way back to Zootopia; back to his comfort zone. He spared a sideways glance at Judy. Her frown had a determined edge, and Nick knew that she wasn't going to let up until he gave in and told her what was bugging him.

"... Alright," he surrendered. If he didn't give her the truth now she'd just hassle him until he did - him and her had been in this situation before, and Nick knew from experience that her determination was practically limitless. "I'm a little freaked out."

Whatever answer Judy had been expecting, that wasn't it. She tilted her head whimsically and her brow knitted in confusion. "'A little freaked out?'" she shook her head with a bemused smirk, giggling. "Over my parents? A big fox like yourself? Come on Nick, don't be stupid."

"It's not your parents," he said hastily, and the discomfort peppering his voice killed Judy's smirk in an instant. "It's just... Different, is all." he explained, gesturing to the swathes of open farmland.

"Nick, how many times have you actually left the city?"

"Counting this time? Once."

"Oh!" Judy's eyes widened with a surprise quickly tempered by understanding. "Right, I understand. Don't worry, I felt the exact same way when I first came to Zootopia." She explained, taking him by the arm and leading him on. "I'd never seen so many animals in one place before and it just o _verwhelmed_ me for a moment. I got used to it soon enough, though, and you will too. Just give it time."

"Yeah," he agreed half-heartedly, casting a disapproving eye over the alien landscape. "Time."

"Hey," said Judy, giving his paw a comforting squeeze. "Chin up. And trust me, mom and dad are gonna make you feel right at home." a bemused smile played briefly across her face. "Who knows, you might even start to like it here."

"Sure I will, Carrots." he replied with a mock-enthusiasm as Judy tugged him towards the nearest car-park. Making dickish remarks had always been his go-to method for relieving stress. He made a mental note to curb the smug comments and play the golden-boy routine when he met Judy's parents, however. He didn't want to screw up his first impression, after all.

"There they are!" exclaimed Judy, pointing out a worn and tattered pickup truck which looked as if it belonged in a scrapyard. A pair of bunnies leaned against its rusted door, chatting and smiling to one another in that familiar way that only old married couples did. The first must've been Judy's mother, Bonnie. She was younger than he thought she'd be, and gave Nick a fairly good idea as to where Judy's looks came from. For a bunny who must've been pushing forty-five, she didn't look half bad. There was an aged, motherly sort of beauty about her; the sort of beauty that had weathered the affects of aging and came out all the better for it.

Second was Judy's dad, Stu. He wasn't anything like Nick had imagined. He'd had an image in his head of some grizzled, grumpy old farmer with a short temper and a _very_ dour outlook on life (yeah, he was a pessimist). Thankfully Stu looked nothing of the sort. The rabbit in question looked grizzled alright; but it was a welcoming, ruddy sort of grizzled which bespoke long hours toiling away under the sun, doing what he loved.

'He has a face made for smiling,' Nick thought to himself. The two bunnies caught sight of them, waved ecstatically, and for a brief, fleeting moment Nick dared to feel a little optimistic.

Then Judy pulled him to the side and slew that optimism with a simple reminder.

"Remember, they don't know about us being... Together... Yet, so from here on in you're just my partner, alright?" she explained in that authoritative tone she liked to use to let him know she was being serious. The stern look she gave him said more than words ever could. If he fucked this up, she'd be pissed, and he knew from experience that there was no more menacing form of retribution on this earth than a pissed Judy.

"Alright 'partner'," he said with a disarming smirk, "Lets go meet your parents."

"Great!" replied Judy, her cheerful demeanour returning without so much as a sign that it'd ever left. She skipped ahead of him, into the waiting, open arms of her parents. "Mom, Dad!" she returned their hug with enthusiasm, sparing a kiss on the cheek for her father-

-And just for a second, Nick wanted to cry.

It was gone in an instant, dissipating so fast that it left him wondering if he'd even felt it in the first place. Had he? Or was it just his nerves playing up? Whatever. He thrust it to the back of his mind as Judy called him over.

He smiled as he made his way over to them, adding a happy little skip to his step to make him seem as unthreatening as possible. Stu untangled himself from the family hug to walk over to Nick, his chipper smile only getting wider as he reached out to shake his paw. "Well you must be our Judy's partner," he said. His voice had a certain bubbly quality to it, as if he'd just gotten over a decent belly-laugh. "Put her there son!"

Nick clasped his calloused paw with a reaffirming squeeze, and decided there and then that he liked Stu. Years worth of experience in hustling had honed his judge of character, and Nick considered himself something of an expert in reading folk. Everything about this bunny, from his slightly dishevelled fur down to the small limp in his step, exuded honesty. This was a bunny who wore his heart on his sleeve and did so with pride - not unlike his daughter. This was a bunny who enjoyed the simple pleasure of a good joke told among friends. This was a bunny with whom Nick could be friends with.

Welp, time to go and fuck it all up.

"Hi, I'm Nick," he said, and the smile he'd been forcing himself to pull fell away, revealing the smug, self-satisfied grin beneath. "And I'm dating your daughter."

Bonnie recoiled in surprise as if he'd just reached out and slapped her.

Stu's happy demeanour died with all the grace of a fart.

And Judy, well...

If expressions could talk, hers would be saying something along the lines of "I'm going to fucking scalp you, you bushy-tailed prick."

Nick, on the other hand, was quite pleased with himself.

The way he saw it they'd had two choices: tell Judy's parents now and get I out of the way, or wait for them to catch on for themselves and get angry at him and Judy for not telling them in the first place. Nick preferred the former, and although Judy didn't know it, he reckoned that he'd just did her a colossal favour by saving her the effort of going out of her way to pretend that the two of them were simply friends.

Of course, that didn't mean that she wasn't going to kill him the second the two of them were alone.


	3. Chapter 3

Dear _Nick,_

 _I looked for you, you know. I started out small, going door to door, asking around the neighbourhood if anybody had caught sight of you. I must've put up thousands of those 'missing mammal' flyers on every lamppost and wall I could find. Then the police got involved, and your face made the front page of the local newspaper, got plastered onto the sides of milk cartons and even had a spot on one of the smaller news channels. Nothing turned up. You didn't want to be found. The police stopped looking and animals just... forgot about you._

 _They forgot about you in the space of a goddamned fortnight._

 _It hurt more than anything. To have the world just shrug and say 'ah well, I guess he's gone'. It happens more than you'd think. When you live in a place like Zootopia, where nobody seems to care about anybody, people get lost fairly easily._

 _I never stopped looking, you know. I spent years knocking on doors and searching alleyways and just driving from one end of the city to the other, hoping to get lucky and spot you on the sidewalk. I even got close a couple of times. I found your name here and there - a former employee at some boarded up massage-parlour in Tundratown, a part time cook at a restaurant in the Rainforest District, a delivery boy - every lead I followed led to a dead end. You covered your tracks, and I started to get the idea into my head that you were hiding from me._

 _I tell myself that isn't the truth, that you're just lost, or ashamed, or confused or whatever excuse I can come up with at the time. Just don't tell me you don't want to see me again. Don't tell me that. Please._

 _All my love,_

 _Mom_

* * *

As far as first impressions went, Nick reckoned that he'd made a pretty decent job of it so far.

The pickup truck's worn-out engine sputtered and wheezed like a chain-smoker on his deathbed as they rambled down the rough, dirt track which Nick supposed passed for a road in these parts. He sat crammed into the backseat with Judy squeezed up against him, glaring daggers into the side of his head. The bunny-sized proportions of the truck hadn't exactly been accommodating for Nick - he had to duck to stop himself from head-butting the ceiling and Judy was practically wedged between him and the door, pinning her arms to her side. He considered that a stroke of luck, because she looked as if she was ready to strangle him right about now.

Her parents sat upfront with Stu at the wheel. Neither had been very conversational since he'd told them about him and Judy, Stu least of all. He kept on stealing sour glances at Nick when he thought he wasn't looking, and Nick was pretty certain he'd caught the bunny swearing under his breath from time to time.

Nick sighed wistfully to himself. Here, sharing an awkwardly small cab with three bunnies who probably wanted to do nothing more than wring his neck, he considered himself in his comfort zone. He may have left the life of a conman behind, but he still toted the charm that'd gotten him so far in the hustling business in the first place. Earning the trust of others had been his livelihood for the better part of his life, and he'd be damned if he hadn't mastered the graceful art of bullshitting himself into someone's good-books.

"So, Judy says you guys live on a farm?" inquired Nick with a polite smile he'd practiced a thousand times before in the mirror. Stu spared him a disapproving glance in the rear view mirror, followed by a long, empty pause that spoke leagues about what he thought of him. It wasn't until Bonnie gave him a stern nudge with her elbow that he finally spoke.

"We do."

"Oh yeah?" said Nick, feigning interest. "Well I've never seen a farm before - they aren't exactly plentiful from where I come. What do you guys grow?"

"Carrots."

"Alright..." He tried his hardest to sound interested and only managed to sound mildly amused. "Judy here loves carrots, don'tcha Judes?" he elbowed Judy playfully, and her glare went from furious to downright, Melt-The-Scales-Off-A-Dragon _enraged_. He toyed with the idea of telling her that she looked cute when she was angry, but thought better of it, if only because he reckoned tempting her anymore might actually cause her to explode.

"Yeah, the way this girl goes through carrots, I'm surprised you guys had anything left come harvest," he joked, earning himself naught but a painful silence. Alright, comedy wasn't going to get him anywhere - time to change tactics. "Y'know I've actually tried a couple of carrot-based recipes, and let me tell ya, you'd be surprised by just how many ways there are to cook a carrot."

"You cook?" asked Bonnie, genuinely surprised, and Nick gave himself a little pat on the back. There's what he'd been looking for: common ground.

"All the time, it's kind of a hobby of mine..." he said, taking care to sound just the slightest bit bashful. "I guess you could say I'm sort of the chef back at our place."

Bonnie's face lit up with a pleasant smile, and Nick knew there and then that he'd struck gold. "You hear that, Stu? Our daughter's dating a cook! Isn't that a stroke of luck? Judy never _could_ handle an oven too well, could you, pumpkin?"

"I can cook!" snapped Judy defensively.

"With something _other_ than a microwave? I don't think so." snarked Nick, all the while knowing he shouldn't. Her anger was already close to its crescendo, and teasing her now of all times was akin to playing with fire-

But goddammit, she made it so easy!

Thankfully Bonnie was kind enough to relieve him of Judy's murderous glare by bursting out laughing. It was a deep, mirthful sort of laugh. The sort of laugh that tempted you to join in no matter how determined you were to be miserable. It softened the edge of Judy's stony frown, almost going so far as to coax the beginning of a smile out of her.

"It's true! You should've seen the mess she made the last time we let her in the kitchen!" laughed Bonnie. "Why, It took us an entire day to scrub the soot off the walls, and the curtains _still_ smell like burnt carrots!"

"Oh my god - Mom! You can't tell him that sort of stuff!" whined Judy, her smouldering anger crumbling into frantic horror.

"Oh phooey, what sort of mother would I be if I didn't share my daughter's embarrassing stories with her boyfriend?" Joked Bonnie. "Heaven knows you've got plenty! Like that time when you went through that Goth phase and got all those silly ear piercings-"

"Mom, stop!"

"So _that's_ where those holes came from..." added Nick.

"Stop encouraging her!"

Nick reclined into his seat and thanked whatever holy deity was looking out for him, because Bonnie was definitely a godsend. Stu's resentment had put a dent in his spirits, but Bonnie's acceptance had popped it right back out. Stu may hate his guts and the countryside may make him uncomfortable and Judy may be pissed seven ways to Sunday with him, but If nothing else, at least he could say that he earned the approval of Judy's mom.

Yes, he was trying to look on the bright side of things. And no, it wasn't working. The car ride dragged on forever, and whenever he found some mild balm in getting a laugh out of Bonnie with one of his crappy jokes, Judy's murderous glare or Stu's venomous glances over his shoulder were always there to snatch it away.

After two hours in the back of Bonnie and Stu's cramped pickup truck, Nick's back felt like a pretzel. The bumpy ride hadn't done him any favours either; it felt as if someone had went to work on his spine with a jackhammer, and there was a burning wedge of pain right between where his back met his pelvis. It hadn't been until they'd hit their eighth bump in a row that Nick got the crazy idea into his head that Stu was actually aiming for the potholes. Yeah, it sounded silly, but he'd be damned if he hadn't noticed a bitter satisfaction writhing behind Stu's eyes whenever Nick gasped in pain.

Either way, he'd been more than a little relieved when the truck finally chortled to a stop.

"Well, here we are," beamed Bonnie as they pulled into the driveway. "Home sweet home! Stu, be a dear and help Nick with his suitcases, would you?"

"That's alright, I can handle it," Nick groaned as he opened the door and limped out onto the lawn. With a sharp twist his back crackled, and the dull throb of the muscles there told him that he'd have the mother of all backaches in the morning. If Stu was the guy who taught Judy how to drive, it was no wonder that she was so terrible behind the wheel. He gave his back a couple more twists to work out all the little knots of tension and went to work hoisting their luggage out of the back. Stu couldn't have helped him even if he'd wanted to - Nick didn't exactly travel light. He set the suitcases down by his feet, and took in the building before him.

The Hopps family estate was a grand, two-storey farmhouse that somehow managed to look quaint despite dwarfing nearly every other house they'd passed on the way here. It toted a rough, Victorian architecture that lent it a modest sort of charm, even though the place looked as if it cost nothing less than a fortune. There was a worn and weathered caricature to it which bespoke a long list of occupants and a lot of wear-and-tear.

It was the sort of place that belonged on the front of a Christmas card - the sort of place which alluded to families of twelve who said prayer before they ate their dinner and spent the nights gathered around the fireplace singing kumbaya or whatever it was country hicks did with their free time. Nick didn't like it. Maybe it was the old-timey-ness or the overly innocent vibe he got from it or maybe he was just plain set on being miserable, but something about it irked him.

"So don't be shy, what do you think?" asked Bonnie eagerly. Stu glared at him as he stropped on by, making his way inside, eyes smouldering with that special sort of hate that fathers reserved for their daughter's boyfriends. Judy stood dauntingly behind him, looming like a guillotine over his neck, waiting patiently for a moment alone with him so she could teach him the true meaning of pain. What did Nick think? Well he thought the same thing he'd thought on the train ride here: This week was going to be hell.

"I think it's lovely," he said with a smile.

* * *

 **Hey there,** **Fritewag here.**

 **Sorry about the slow updates and plodding pace of the story so far, I'll try my best to speed things up a little from hereon in.**


	4. Chapter 4

_Dear Nick,_

 _I went to see your father today. I brought him those purple petunias he used to love and propped them up against his grave and I just couldn't find it in myself to cry like I used to. I used to spend ours sobbing over that bastard's tombstone and now I can't so much as muster up a tear. I'm just so tired of crying. Tired and fed up with it. You and I were the only ones who cried at that ghost town of a funeral and then you left me all alone to cry by myself. One fox only has so many tears, I suppose._

 _Why don't you ever visit your father, Nick? I don't know why, but I'm always expecting to drop by the graveyard one morning and find a heap of bouquets mounded over his grave and a letter with your name on it. I wake up some mornings thinking 'maybe he'll have left something there today', and I'm always left disappointed. I know you and him never got on and I know he was never an honest fox, but he was good to me and he loved you. He loved you like a father should and it'd break his heart to see you following in his footsteps._

 _Please, don't be following in his footsteps... He wanted you to do better. He had dreams for you. Aspirations. He wanted you to be a doctor, or a mechanic or a rocket scientist; hell, a goddamned magician - anything other than him. The last thing he wanted was for you to be like your Dad. And I have to be the one who sits in front of his tombstone and tell him that's exactly the way you turned out._

 _I always want to cry, but I'm just so tired of it all._

 _Love,_

 _Mom_

* * *

Nick collapsed face-first onto the bed, feeling how the dead ought to feel. The bumps from their rough car ride had blossomed into uncomfortable bruises, and he couldn't so much as move without awakening one of the dozens of aches littered across his body. Silvery moonlight glowered through the window, stabbing through wisps of cloud. The afternoon had been a slog, wading through countless 'hello's and 'how-do-you-do's as Bonnie and Stu introduced him to the rest of the family.

It was a big family.

The Hopps family estate was a large old place, and he'd be damned if nigh on every square inch wasn't occupied. By the time he'd gone through the arduous process of greeting everyone, his paw had been shaken numb. There'd been twenty three in total, ranging from five year old kits to sixteen year old teens to young twentysomethings on the cusp of adulthood.

All of them had been overjoyed to meet him, all of them had wanted to talk to him, and all of them had made damned sure that he knew their names. Don't believe him? Alright: Elizabeth, Julia, Gary, Timothy, Anna, Christopher, Horton, Sally, Gilbert, Daniel, Stan, Rhianna, Jessica, Gordon, Michelle, Peter, Billy-ray, Lucy, Damien, Frankie, Lauren, Richard... And Bob.

Then, after hours of greetings and getting to know what amounted to roughly a tenth or so of Judy's immediate family (apparently she had countless brothers and sisters living elsewhere), they'd sat down to dinner, and Nick found out first-hand that Bonnie was nowhere near as good a cook as she claimed to be. Dinner had amounted to a crude carrot stew that'd been drenched with pepper and near lethal amounts of salt. He'd never been able to grasp why Judy loved those shitty microwave meals, but now he was starting to get the idea. After what he'd just eaten, the cheap microwave crap that Judy tended to eat would've seemed like gourmet.

He would've loved to have called it a night there and then; the scarce helping of sleep he'd had on the train and the time he'd spent crammed into the backseat of that used-up old pickup truck had left him dead on his feet. So naturally, Bonnie had wanted to give him the grand tour of the farmhouse, and naturally, she used that cute little smile that was impossible to say no to.

Fun fact: Bunnies didn't lose their cuteness as they got older; they just learned to use it more effectively.

And so, he'd let the excited old bunny drag him around the house from room to room, warbling on ceaselessly about the history of every goddamned stick of furniture she happened to come across. The tour had ended at the door of Judy's old bedroom, where apparently he'd be bunking with Judy. With a final 'goodnight', she'd shepherded him through the door and left him alone so that he might finally get some rest.

He buried his face into the pillow, a thankful, exhausted sigh escaping him. The mattress was hard, the pillow was lumpy and the bed was so small that his feet hung over the end, but Nick couldn't find it in himself to care. Right now it felt like heaven.

Then Judy stormed into the room, slamming the door angrily behind her, and Nick kissed heaven goodbye.

"Nicholas Piberius Wilde," she snapped with all the condemnation of a guillotine hanging readily over his neck. "I am NOT a happy bunny."

Nick winced, seizing up in horrible anticipation like a fox caught in front of a speeding semi. She was using his full name - she only did that when she was getting ready to crucify his ass. He hazarded a glance in Judy's direction and immediately regretted it, his skin knotting up into gooseflesh.

Most mammals thought bunnies couldn't look intimidating.

Most mammals had never met Judy Hopps on a bad day.

She was practically bristling with anger - so much so that he swore that he could almost feel the heat of her rage beating against him. Her paws were balled up into fists and her mouth was set into a hard, damning frown. Her ears twitched with righteous fury, and if Nick looked close enough, he could just about see the vein popping out on her forehead.

"H-hey Carrots..." he stuttered, his smooth demeanour faltering.

If she'd heard him, she didn't give any indication of it. Instead she began her slow, inevitable march towards him, her eyes a pair of smouldering braziers, loaming with a white-hot lust for vengeance. Nick rolled off the bed, backing himself into a corner and holding out his paws disarmingly. "Now look, I know you're pissed - I'd be pissed - but if you just let me explain..." the words sped off his tongue in a futile attempt to set up some sort of defence against Judy's warpath, and she trampled them underfoot carelessly. She was hungry for retribution, and she looked about ready to drag him kicking and screaming to the gates of Hades in order to get it.

He swallowed the lump in his throat. This must've been how sinners felt on their way to hell...

"Judes?"

"Nick," said Judy, her voice terrifyingly calm. She came to a halt in front of him, her face inches away from his. From this distance, he swore that he could almost see the little tongues of flame dancing in her pupils. "You have thirty seconds to explain yourself, and if I don't like what I hear, I swear I'm going to _destroy_ you."

"Okay, alright, thirty seconds..." he breathed a sigh of relief. Thirty seconds were all he needed. "So I spilt the beans and told your parents we were fooling around-"

Judy raised her paw, readying a slap that would've turned his face to pulp.

"- _dating!_ I meant to say dating!" he placated. "So I told them we were dating, but isn't it better that they found out now rather than later? I mean, your Dad doesn't like me _now_. Can you imagine what he'd think of me if he found out that I'd been having it on with his daughter behind his back?" he reasoned, risking a gentle caress of Judy's arm. "Come on, you don't really think we'd have managed to keep it under wraps from everyone, did you? Your Mom knows you like the back of her paw; she would've figured it out in no time."

He saw a shadow of consideration flitter across Judy's features, and decided to push his advantage. Taking a step forwards, he set his paws around the curve of her waist in a light embrace, settling his mouth over her ear to whisper. "Besides... When someone like me gets a girl like you, you can't expect me not to brag a little."

Judy glared up at him, her face scrunched up into an absurd cocktail of strain and fury as she tried to keep the fire of her anger kindled. Finally, with a grumpy huff, she let her rage go, returning his hug begrudgingly. "You got that line from a movie, didn't you?"

"Yep."

Another huff, this time followed by the ghost of a half-hearted giggle. "If you weren't so handsome, I'd break your nose."

"You're not angry?"

"Oh I'm plenty angry," she growled, and for a brief, terrifying moment Nick thought that she might regress back into her 'crush, kill, destroy' mode and tear him limb from limb. "But... I can understand why you did it, and I guess you're... Sort of right." She delivered a fist to his ribs just hard enough to hurt. "Doesn't make you any less of a jerk, though."

Nick barely managed to stop himself from breaking out into a victory dance. He'd been a victim of one of Judy's rare temper tantrums before, and he considered stopping one akin to averting a nuclear crisis.

"Yeah, but I'm _your_ jerk..." he paused, contemplating. "Tell you what, how's about I make this up to you and do you a favour?"

She pulled away from his arms, apprehensively cocking a brow at him. "What kind of favour?"

He smirked, lowering his head down to her level. "Well, anything my little Bun-Bun should ask for..."

"You could start by never calling me that again."

"Aww, but I thought you _liked_ pet names?" he teased.

"Shut up... And if you really want to do me a favour-" she walked over to the bed and tossed the pillow and covers into a careless heap on the floor. "-You can start by sleeping on the floor tonight."

"What!?" yelped Nick, the humour suddenly gone from his voice. After a whole day of being dragged around like an orange ragdoll, he'd been looking forwards to that bed. "B-but-"

"Save it, Nick." she said, casting herself onto the mattress with an emphasised stretch and a satisfied sigh, flaunting the comfort she'd denied him. "Consider it payback. Besides, I'm pretty sure the frame would give way under the weight of that ego of yours..." she yawned.

"If by 'ego' you mean 'healthy amount of self confidence' then-"

"I don't." she said, and the warning tone of finality she used reminded him that she was still a little bit too pissed with him to be swapping banter when they both should've been sleeping. "Oh, and I'm going to need that pillow back; this mattress is a lot harder than I remember."

"Miss Hopps, if you want this pillow then you can pry it from my cold, dead paws." he replied indignantly, bundling both the pillow and blankets up in his arms defensively.

"Don't tempt me..."

"Hey, if you'd just let me stay on the bed you'd be enjoying blankets, a pillow and a super-awesome cuddle-buddy right about now. But hey, I guess petty vengeance means more to you than that," he drawled sarcastically. "Well, I'd best find a place to sleep on the cold, hard floor. Woe is me and all that-'

"If I let you sleep with me, do you promise to shut up?"

He scratched at his chin, pretending to mull it over. "Deal," he said before bounding onto the bed and stealing up Judy in a clumsy, loving hug. The bed was barely big enough for him alone, and it took some manoeuvring which bordered on contortionism to get the two of them on there. Thankfully, Nick was just fine and dandy when it came to squeezing up tight with Judy-

-What could he say? He liked to cuddle.

Judy grumbled in his arms, trying her hardest stay mad at him. He crumbled her resolve with a light, goodnight kiss on the forehead. "Love you, Judes."

"Yeah, yeah... I love you too..." grumbled Judy, admitting defeat.

* * *

 **Fritewag here,**

 **So it was another uneventful chapter. Sorry about that. I needed something to fill the gap between the last chapter and what I've got planned out for the next chapter. Don't worry though - the next one's going to be a big one.**

 **Now, on the subject of sex scenes, something I know you beautiful, randy motherfuckers have been holding out for. From this early on in the story it could go either way: a little sex (a scene at the end, like Sad Judy) or a whole lot peppered throughout. I think it's only right that I let the readers decide. Let me know what you guys want, and I'll try to accommodate, within reason.**


	5. Chapter 5

_Dear Nick,_

 _Today I woke up halfway through the afternoon, and when I tried to get out of bed my spine locked up and hurt like all manner of hell. I went back to sleep, and didn't wake up again until midnight. My back is still tingling in that uncomfortable, feverish way it tends to get when I get a cold - feels like there's a swarm of spiders crawling across my shoulders, wearing little boots made of ice._

 _I'm at the age where I'm starting to fall apart, Nick. My breath gets short and my chest clamps up around my lungs when I work myself too hard. My knees ache if I try to take a stroll. Sometimes my paws start shaking all on their own. I forget things I shouldn't; what day it is, my pin number... The way your voice sounded..._

 _Why do I even bother with writing this? Am I just catering to some tragic whim of mine or am I hoping that maybe, just some day I'll be able to show these to you in person? I wish I knew, but the reason behind these letters rotted from my mind along with your voice and my pin number and whatever goddamn day it is today._

 _Maybe it's because I'm scared._

 _Somewhere off in the distant horizon I can see the Grim Reaper waving to me and I'm just so damned scared that he'll go and take me away before I have a chance to see you again. My doctor is prescribing me pills with names I've never heard of, I break into these terrible coughing fits that just never seem to end and it all frightens me so much that I burst into tears last night like I was five years old again._

 _I'm scared without you. Scared and lonely. I know I've asked it a thousand times before and I know you'll never hear me but won't you please come home? I need my Little Trooper now more than ever. Please._

 _Love Mom._

* * *

It was the dead of night, Nick had Judy bundled up against his chest and she just couldn't find it in herself to go to sleep. Their brief argument and the way Nick had oiled his way out of it was still hot on her mind. With a few graceful flicks of that silver tongue of his they'd gone from a blistering argument to snuggling each other to sleep. If she could've, she'd have confiscated that tongue of his under the grounds of it being a concealed weapon. Damned thing was dangerous...

She'd given up on trying to work herself back up into a fury about an hour ago. Every time she managed to get close to angry Nick would shift up against her or mumble offhandedly in his sleep, and her anger would fall apart as if it'd never been anything other than a tower of precariously placed jenga blocks. Dammit, she wanted to be angry with him. She wanted to be angry with him so bad, but he was just so... Just so...

Nick rumbled throatily in his sleep, and his paw fell clutching and needful on her belly, tugging her further into his comfy embrace.

... Lovely...

Truly, she knew that there was no hope in her staying mad at him - not that that stopped her from trying. They'd been in situations like this before, and they always seemed to end in the same way: he'd charm her into calamity and she'd fall for it every time, hook, line and sinker. It helped that he tended to sweeten the deal with little offers of affection: flowers, nights out, that wonderful carrot cake he tended to bake, he always had a little something hidden up those sleeves of his, and they always seemed to work like a charm.

Heck, he hadn't even needed to bribe her this time around. He'd explained away his dick-ishness and she'd caved in just as she always did.

Call her spineless all you want; _you_ try to say no to that smile.

She turned herself towards him, admiring him grudgingly as he slept. There was a ghost of a smile lingering at the corners of his mouth, wrought with an almost sinful sort of playfulness. His features angled sharply, honed to that vicious kind of handsomeness which belonged only to predators. Everything, from the sleek shape of his muzzle to the teasing glint of pointed teeth between his slightly parted lips exuded a dark, visceral sensuality.

He grunted in his sleep, hugging her closer. A paw wandered aimlessly down her side, and Judy caught herself biting her lip as it caressed the curve of her waist. There was something satisfyingly alien about being touched by him. The leathery pads of his paws had a not at all unpleasant roughness to them, and she couldn't help but feel a rush of excitement, spiced with an allure of danger, whenever they touched her.

Somewhere within her, beneath all the grumpiness and resentment, her arousal perked.

Crap. Between all the hectic busywork down at the precinct before leaving and the frantic rush to catch their train, neither of them had found the time to... Do other things. In fact, aside from the occasional kiss and hug, Nick hadn't touched her intimately in almost a week - a drastic change of pace for how things usually went for them. Ever since her first time with Nick, she'd found herself craving more. The fox was a drug - addictive as he was euphoric. Making love to him was like experiencing heaven, and being deprived of his sex was like being dragged through hell. In the short time she and him had been together, she'd gone from being a virgin to making a habit out of sex.

She steeled herself against Nick's grasping paws, shooing away the beginnings of lust before they could take form. Nope. Not tonight. She was supposed to be angry at him, and she reckoned fucking him would somewhat dampen the lesson she was trying to give him. Granted, she could never stay mad at Nick for long, but the very least she could do was keep up the _charade_ of being angry - if only on the principle of the thing.

So no, no sex tonight. Nick had been a bad fox, and bad foxes were meant to be punished. She'd been lax in that department up until now, but no more! As soon as he woke up she'd give him the rundown of things good and proper - make it perfectly clear to him that if he wasn't on his best behaviour from hereon in, she'd decimate him so thoroughly that he'd spend the rest of his days eating through a straw! And so help her god, if he cracked so much as a single joke about her teenage 'goth' phase, she'd... She'd-

Her paw found the surface of his chest, feeling at the steady throb of his heart, and her horniness bulldozed its way to the forefront of her mind.

...

Screw it.

"Nick," she muttered, nudging the fox awake. His eyes flicked open so calmly that she had to wonder if he'd ever been sleeping to begin with. He drew out a long winded yawn, stretching in that easy, supple way of his which harkened back to his predatory heritage. One of the first things she'd noticed about Nick had been the way he moved: purposefully and with constant readiness, slender muscles prepared to snap into chase. At first it had terrified her, then it had intrigued her, and now it excited her in ways she knew it really shouldn't. There was a warning in the way he moved; the constant prowl to his step, the effortless and graceful way he turned his head, the gentle yet certain way he held her - little things she that wouldn't have noticed had her deeper, primal instincts not been on a constant lookout for them.

By his basest nature he was, and always would be, a carnivore. A creature built for the purpose of killing. Something to be feared. A threat.

She loved it.

"Wussup?" mumbled Nick, voice weighed down by sleep. Judy leaned forwards and replied with a soft, tender kiss. He jolted fully awake as her mouth pushed hungrily against his, struck by some wayward, unexpected thunderbolt of passion. She decided she wanted more, pressing hard against his lips, demanding entrance. She forced her way through, her tongue mashing angrily against his.

His paws fumbled clumsily into the groove of her back, and the sensation of his claws raking against her skin sent her lust spiralling out of control. This was something naughty - something forbidden. Her paw felt its way beneath his shirt, shamelessly groping at that which society had deemed off limits. The sleek musculature of his belly, the proud swell of his chest, the hard lines of a hunter's body...

She pulled away from the kiss, smouldering with anticipation. Nick looked caught between somewhere between surprised and aroused, eyes round with shock and his breaths long and heavy. He looked almost vulnerable - subservient, even. Here, laying atop of him, her paws firm on his chest, _she_ got to be the one in charge. The little bunny, conquering the big, bad fox. the thought alone made her weak in the knees.

"So... I take it you're not angry with me any more?" asked Nick hopefully.

"Oh, I'm still angry," she rebuked, working open the buttons of his shirt. "Just... Consider this a chance to make things up to me."

His expression of surprise gathered itself up into a sly smirk in an instant. "Miss Hopps, I do believe you're trying to seduce me."

"Is it working?"

Nick yanked her down atop of him, kissing her roughly.

She took that as a yes.

* * *

 **Sorry for the dry spell. It was a busy couple of weeks, the words didn't want to get out of my head and I've just started playing Witcher 3.**

 **In short, sorry for being a lazy fuck.**

 **As for whether or not there's going to be sex scenes aplenty: there is. I was thinking about rolling a sex scene into this chapter, but I decided that if I was going to write lewds, I may as well go all the way and give sex scenes their own chapters.**

 **Again, sorry for the delays. I'd give you a proper excuse, but I really don't have one. Feel free to message me if I start lagging behind in my updates again - a swift boot up my ass usually gets me back on track.**


	6. Chapter 6 (Lewds)

Judy positioned herself atop of him, thighs locked firmly around his waist and her paws roaming beneath his shirt with a horny curiosity. her ears were perked and her nose twitched with anticipation. Outside the clouds had parted and the moon glared through the window, steeping Judy in its silvery light, intensifying one half of her with an almost eerie luminescence whilst draping the other in thick cascades of shadow. Her eyes wandered along his body, alight with lust.

 _'She looks like angels ought to...'_ The thought wandered into his mind out of nowhere, and Nick found himself agreeing with it. It was her eyes more than anything - the way they looked at him - half lidded and hungry for passion. He'd had scores of girlfriends and even more cheap, drunken one night stands to boot, and none of them could compare in the slightest to that look - a simple, alluring stare which said _'I want you, and I want you now.'_ The look only a person who loved you could give.

A jitter of exhilaration scrambled up his spine, and he had to take a deep, calming breath to stop himself from shaking. Even after having her a dozen times over, she still managed to make him feel giddy - like a teenager in love. To his own amazement Nick found himself frozen with anticipation, his heart racing a mile a minute, the blood in his veins rich with electricity.

She pulled his shirt away from his shoulders and tossed it carelessly onto the floor, and the slight breeze rolling through the window raked coolly against his bare chest, making the simple pleasure of Judy's wonderfully warm body against his all the more apparent.

"It's been way too long since we did this, you know." he said casually in a bid to cover up his frayed nerves with small talk.

Judy addressed him with one of those adorable, heart melting giggle-snorts of hers. "Too long? It's been a couple of weeks at most!"

"And that's about as long as I can last without a hearty dose of Judes." he replied, only half joking. Sex with Judy was different than it had been with his long list of past lovers. There was a certain spark there that'd been absent with all the others - a sort of deep, sensual connection shared beneath the bed sheets that he'd never felt with anyone else. It wasn't sex; it was lovemaking, and he'd be damned if he hadn't become a raving addict.

"Oh?" said Judy, and without so much as a warning, a paw slid down across his belly and under the rim of his pants. A small yelp of surprise escaped him, and his chest trembled feverishly with excitement. His breath shook from between his lips, hot with desperation. His manhood stiffened as her fingertips kissed at its length, and twitched against the soft touch of her palm as she took it in her paw and squeezed. "Wow, you weren't joking. You're about ready to burst!"

She tugged at him lightly, eliciting a desperate whimper. Judy hid a mischievous giggle behind her free paw as the other tore open his pants and yanked down his boxers. Nick's passion sprang forth to meet her, still twitching eagerly.

"Well, somebody's excited..."

Nick gasped as her fingers clenched around him, and with a slow, meaningful caress she drew a throaty moan of approval from him so loud that it earned him a concerned look from Judy. "Sorry! It's uh, been a while since I, uh... _Emptied_ myself, so to speak." he admitted, an ode to just how busy he'd been the past few days. For the past two weeks sex had been a stranger, and he hadn't exactly found the opportunity to... deal with it... himself.

"I can tell," admitted Judy. Her fingers brushed lightly across his length, and Nick had to bite back another whimper. "You're hardly ever this twitchy," she said. A finger circled the tip of his penis, and the organ spasmed in a myriad excitement. The whimper he'd been trying to hold back wavered from his mouth. Somewhere in his head, beneath all the thoughts and emotions, the savage little beast of desire growled for more.

"Ngh... Judy..."

"Shh, just relax," cooed Judy, and as she said so her paw clasped firmly around his passion, stroking it in a slow but certain rhythm. Up... And ever so slowly, down. His loins burned savagely, his knees trembling with anticipation. Judy's free paw slid up groin to stroke at his belly whilst the other pumped at his manhood, and Nick trembled out another shameless whimper of satisfaction.

Judy blushed deeply. "You like it? I've never done something like this before so-"

"F-fine! You're, uh, doing - _nngh -_ fine," assured Nick. He let an agitated breath seethe out from between his clenched teeth. Gradually she began to pick up speed, tugging him ever so slowly to his zenith. Up and down, up and down, up and down. The tension began to rile up in his gut like angry, storm-stirred ocean, his paws clasping at fistfuls of bed sheets. He was getting close... "Just d-don't stop."

She tightened her grip on him firmly, smiling that sultry smile she only ever used for him. It melted his heart almost as much as it aroused him. "So, not bad for my first try, I take it?" she leaned forwards, puckered her lips and kissed at the tip of his manhood. Her lips brushed against him lightly, soft and wet like moist velvet. Her tongue slipped briefly from her mouth to grind shamelessly against the end of his member, and Nick responded with another hearty moan. His peak drew ever closer, the wonderful, tell-tale tingle already rising in his crotch.

"N-not at all," stuttered Nick. "Judy? I'm... I'm getting close..."

Her paw tightened its iron grip around him, pumping at his erection enthusiastically. "It's alright," cooed Judy. "Don't fight it, let it out..." Her paw was a blur along his manhood, moving in a savage rhythm - up and down up and down up and down up -

"Aaah... _Aaaah_ -"

"That's it, come on..."

" _Nnngh, Judy!"_ His knees locked up, the tingle in his crotch kindling into an inferno, and his loins exploded in ecstasy as his climax struck him with all the force of a speeding freight train. He jolted, struck by a savage thunderbolt of pleasure, and would've screamed had Judy not kissed him there and then. Her mouth came down hard on his lips, relishing in his taste.

The volcano of arousal that'd been building between his thighs erupted in a rapture of orgasm. His manhood exploded in Judy's paw, his essence spurting out onto his belly, the bed sheets and damn near everything else.

"Oh god, Judy!" he cried as the weight of his climax came crushing down upon him - it gripped him in a seizure of bliss, his hips bucking into Judy's paw as if they had a mind or their own. Judy giggled, her rhythm changing from a passionate rush to a slow, hard caress, wringing him to the last drop.

His orgasm subsided with a shudder of satisfaction, and Nick sank back into warm recesses of the bed sheets, billowing a sigh of elation. Judy dove into his chest with a little _'pompf'_ before inspecting the thick ropes of cum between her fingers.

"There's so much" she stated, slightly amazed. "you weren't lying when you said you were pent up," she wiped her paw clean on his fur - something that should've bothered him, but didn't. He'd came so fiercely that his stomach was more or less coated in his own seed anyways. A couple of stray gouts had played themselves across Judy's shirt, and she regarded them proudly. "Gotta say, though, for my first pawjob, I think I did okay."

"I'd give it a four outta ten; could've been better."

She swatted him playfully on the nose. "Dumb fox."

"You know you love it when I tease you," he replied, smiling. His paw fell on her supple thigh, squeezing affectionately. "So... How's about I return the favour?"

"Oh? and just how do you intend to do that?" asked Judy, voice creamy with desire. Guessing from the way she unbuttoned the fly of her pants, Nick reckoned she already knew the answer. She peeled away her shirt along with her pants and tossed them both aside, leaving her practically naked aside from her-

"Carrot-patterned panties?"

Judy blushed, slapping her paws across her absurd underwear to hide them from view. Alas, the damage was done, and Nick could already see the dawning horror eclipsing her face. She'd just given him the holy grail of embarrassing secrets, and she knew for a fact that he was going to use it to hound her to the moon and back. Judy's mouth worked wordlessly, groping for excuses.

"They were half-price at Preyda..."

Naturally, Nick burst out laughing.

"S-shut up!" squeaked Judy, batting him lightly. "I was running low on underwear and these were the only pairs they had in my size!"

Nick wiped away a tear, giggling like a madman. "Oh my god, it looks something a pre-schooler would wear!"

"They... They're just really comfortable is all!" defended Judy. "Do you know how hard it is for me to find underwear that doesn't leave a rash? I-I'll have you know that I have _very_ delicate private parts!"

Despite his aching back, Nick still managed to double over laughing.

Judy went to make another excuse before rationalising that she'd only embarrass herself further, instead deciding to cross her arms and seethe at Nick until he finally burnt himself out. Eventually his laughter came to an end, and Nick fell back onto the pillow, glowing with that smug sort of satisfaction that only a good, hearty belly laugh could bring. "So," said Judy. "Are you quite done?"

Nick waved her off. "Yeah, I'm good. It's out of my system. Can't promise I won't come out with some one-liners about this later on down the line though-"

"Tell another soul about this and I'll exorcise you." said Judy mater-of-factly.

"Okay, okay, no panty jokes, got it." surrendered Nick, crossing his fingers.

"Good! Now if you don't mind, I'm going to bed," She huffed, turning away from him. "Thanks for ruining the mood and all, jerk."

"Oh no you don't," said Nick, Pulling her back into his arms. "Didn't I say I had a favour to return?" he craned his neck and pushed his muzzle into her soft, inviting belly, showering it with kisses as he made his way down to the rim of her ridiculous panties. Judy mumbled grumpily, determined to be angry with him, and then Nick teased at her bellybutton with a flick of his tongue, and her horniness punted any thought of being cross with him clear out of her mind. She made a wet, throaty sound of approval as he nipped and teased at the soft, sensitive inside of her thighs. His nose brushed against the damp cotton of her underwear - moist with her arousal - and he indulged himself in the rich scent of her sex.

Something clawed at his insides; something deep, eldritch and not at all unlike hunger. A strange, primal urge that'd been shrink-wrapped and stowed away in the dusty attic of his mind. Something so small and subtle yet linked so intrinsically to his being that he couldn't understand how he hadn't noticed it there until Judy's shuddering whimpers and the spicy musk of her juices had made it rear its predatory head.

Nick growled.

With a sharp, angry movement of his paws he tore Judy's panties down to her knees and plunged his muzzle deep into her sopping womanhood. Judy yelped in surprise, her fingers clasping at the back of his head and digging deep and his tongue plundered the depths of her vagina. The strange, nameless thing inside him rejoiced in the delectable taste of her fluids, all the while howling for more.

"N-Nick!" stuttered Judy between elated squeals of pleasure. "Oh Nick, sweet cheese and crackers, _Nick!_ "

His mouth found her clitoris and pounced on it hungrily, his tongue grinding and lips suckling so intensely that after a mere minutes worth of work they began to ache. Judy's paws gripped at his ears and pulled him into her crotch, even as her hips thrust eagerly into his muzzle. With a final, exhausted lick against her pearl, Nick sent her tumbling over the edge.

Judy buried her face into the mattress to muffle an unbridled scream of pleasure as her orgasm overcame her, and the savage little thing stalking the halls of Nick's subconscious roared victoriously as her fluids gushed out onto the bedding. Satisfied, with its hunger sated, the little thing - the avatar of his deeper predatory urges, prowled back to the far reaches of his mind, slinking back into the shadows.

The two of them collapsed upon one another, embracing the afterglow, and Nick had to stop himself from falling asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. He was exhausted - the good, fulfilled kind of exhausted that one earned through a hard days work.

Judy cuddled against him, stroking gingerly at his chest. "Nicholas Wilde... You're a _savage._ "

Nick smirked proudly. "thanks... I try."

They nestled together wearily, fading off into the realms of sleep peacefully.

Neither of them noticed the wide pair of eyes, staring through the crack in the door with a horrified fascination.


	7. Chapter 7

_Dear Nick,_

 _Today had been a good day. I woke up at six with nary an ache to pain me, made myself a cup of coffee and somewhere down the line I decided I wasn't going to spend my Saturday moping around and feeling sorry for myself. So I went out, and it wasn't until I felt the crisp pre-sunrise breeze tickling against my nose that I realised that I hadn't left the house for three days._

 _I hadn't the foggiest idea what to do with myself at first - It'd been so long since I'd really been anywhere or done anything just for the sake of it that I'd almost forgotten how. So... I improvised. I went to the bus stop, hopped on the first bus that came along and let it take me away to wherever._

 _Wherever turned out to be TundraTown._

 _If you were to ask me now I wouldn't be able to tell you why I got off there. Maybe it was because it'd been forever since I'd felt the snow beneath my feet or maybe the cold agreed with me in some way or maybe I was just feeling adventurous. It was like I was on autopilot - my legs were moving and my brain just sat back and let them take me away. I went shopping and blew two hundred dollars on trinkets, I ate a three course meal at one of those niche roadside diners, I made snow angels and giggled to myself like I was a little girl again. It'd been so long since I'd actually enjoyed myself that it almost overwhelmed me with how good it felt._

 _By the time I caught a taxi back home my back felt as if someone had worked it over with a hammer, I'd caught the mother of all colds and I couldn't stop smiling. For the first time in months I'd actually managed to eke out some happiness. I told myself I'd go to Sahara Square tomorrow, and then the Rainforest District the day after, and the day after that who knows!_

 _Then I got home._

 _I checked the mailbox._

 _I found a parcel from you, stuffed with a crumpled wad of money, and suddenly the whole day went down the toilet._

 _Just as I was beginning to pick myself off of the ground you knocked me back down with a harsh dose of reality: my son was still out there somewhere, maybe homeless, maybe hurting, and I was running around making snow angels and pissing my money away on worthless trash. I felt like a criminal - going out and living the high-life while my baby could very well be rotting in some decrepit gutter. The guilt got me crying, and I curled up on my bed and sobbed myself to sleep, just like I always did._

 _Today had been a good day, Nick, until you went and ruined it all._

 _Sometimes I hate you, Nicholas Wilde._

 _Love,_

 _Mom_

* * *

Bonnie trod meekly down the hall to her bedroom, her mind a steaming wreck, peppered with shards of shattered innocence and populated by the mutilated carcasses of fond memories - Judy's first day at school, watching Saturday morning cartoons with her, trying and failing hysterically to teach her how to use an oven - all of those sweet little memories were listed among the casualties, forever tainted by the horror she'd just witnessed.

Her trembling paw found the doorknob, and she shuffled into the bedroom, staring ahead owlishly, shellshocked. She felt dirty. As if she'd just tripped and fell face first into dirt, only this wasn't the sort of dirt that'd clean off with a good shower and a scrub. No, this was the sort of dirt that'd stick with her forever, no matter how hard she'd try and wash herself clean. Some day, years from now, when she was laying old and decrepit on her deathbed, this moment, this _horrendous_ little moment would come rushing to the forefront of her mind, and she'd die remembering the night upon which she spied upon her daughter doing lewd things with the fox D.

Stu lay in bed with his nose buried in a copy of C _arrot Farming Weekly,_ reading by the light of his bedside lampshade. He looked at her and balked.

"Marmalade and biscuits Bon', you look like you just saw a ghost!"

 _'No, no ghost. Just my sweet, innocent daughter jerking off her pred boyfriend in the same bed I'd laid her in when she fell asleep on the couch all those years ago. Just my darling little girl talking dirty to a fox as she rubbed one out of him. Just my own flesh and blood moaning like a banshee whilst dear, charming Nick buried his face between her thighs.'_ She didn't say. Shocked as she was, some fleeting little scrap of common sense left over from the carnage of her mindfuck stopped her from telling Stu what she'd seen. Her knowing what Judy got up to with her boyfriend behind closed doors was bad enough. If Stu caught word of this, there'd be hell to pay.

"I'm fine, Dear," she lied, stumbling into bed next to him. She wasn't fine. In fact, she was pretty goddamned far from fine. She'd passed fine about an hour earlier on down the road, and now she was speeding down the highway full-speed towards madness.

Stu slid his reading glasses down the bridge of his nose and eyed her, unimpressed. Unfortunately for her Stu was, and always had been, a walking, talking lie detector. His stare crushed down upon her, as if to squeeze the truth out of her. "Oh really?" he grumbled disapprovingly.

"Yes, perfectly fine, dear." she answered insistently, adding a hard edge to her tone to ward off any other attempts to coax the truth out of her. She met Stu's stare with one of her own, and he backed off with a weary sigh.

"Alright, guess you're 'fine' then." he said in surrender. As much as he disapproved of lying he trusted her well enough to know that if she was keeping something secret, then chances were she was going it for a good reason. He snapped his magazine shut, flicked off his lampshade and tugged the sheets over his shoulders. "If you wanna tell me what's really bothering you, don't be afraid to wake me." he said bluntly before effortlessly nodding off to sleep.

And so, as the light of the lampshade faded, Bonnie was left alone in the dark with naught but her thoughts to keep her busy.

It was going to be a long night.

* * *

To Nick, who'd been waking up to the shrill ring of an alarm clock at five-thirty ever since he'd joined the ZPD, there were few things in this world worth appreciating more than a late morning.

Outside the sun fought its way out from behind the clouds and lathered the fields, cottages and burrows of Bunnyburrow in a majestic, golden light. It shone through the window in crisp amber bars, like a beckoning finger inviting them to come outside and enjoy its warmth. Nick spared a lazy glance at the clock, saw that it was only eight in the morning, and politely told the sun to go fuck itself. He reached over and pulled the curtains closed before burying his nose back between Judy's ears and making an effort to nod off back to sleep.

If being a lazy bastard was an art, then Nick was a master.

He squeezed Judy tighter into his chest, relishing in her presence. She wriggled between his arms, mumbling, and Nick cursed himself for holding her too hard. It was rare for Judy to sleep past six, and her laying in bed after seven was practically unheard of. You see, Judy was one of those perplexing and unusual people who actually _liked_ getting up early in the morning - something that Nick reckoned could be classified as a mental illness. If he wasn't getting up at five thirty on a work day, then Judy was dragging him out of bed on a weekend, demanding that he get his ass into gear and spend the day with her. It'd been cute the first five or so times. Now it was more of an annoyance than anything else.

"Nrrmph... Nick?" yawned Judy, coming awake. He closed his eyes and feigned sleep, hoping against hope that Judy would do the same. She yawned again, stretching limberly, only to freeze as she caught a glimpse of the clock.

"Nick, wake up!" she said, grabbing hold of his arm and shaking. "Nick? I know you're faking! Get up!"

"No," he grunted stubbornly. "I'm sleeping."

"You're awake and you're getting out of this bed," Insisted Judy. "You've got a family to impress and you aren't going to get any headway lazing around."

"Daaaw, but I wanna snuggle!"

"Later," said Judy, and the serious edge to her tone stopped him short of another witty remark. Nick propped himself up on his shoulders and looked at her, suddenly concerned. Her mouth was pinched in a small frown, and her brow was knitted in something that could've been determination or anger. He'd seen that face before. 'Judy-on-Duty', he called it. It was a face she usually saved for Bogo's briefings and the investigation of crime scenes - a face that said 'alright, I'm done playing around. What's the problem and how do I solve it?'

He reached out and laid a paw on her shoulder. "Hey, What's up?"

She tensed beneath his touch, riling up and turning on him, some stern remark teetering on the edge of her tongue. She stopped short of snapping at him and deflated with a weary sigh, suddenly exhausted. "Sorry," she huffed. "I'm just... Just nervous, is all," she admitted, bashfully rubbing at the back of her neck. "It's just that yesterday went so _terribly..."_

"'Terribly?'" repeated Nick. "Come on Carrots, it was 'unpleasant' at best."

"Unpleasant? Nick, my Dad hates you-"

"-He _dislikes_ me," Nick corrected. "Totally different. Besides, I've got all day to win him over, haven't I? And I'm nothing if not a charmer," he soothed, coiling his bushy tail around her waist and coaxing her gently into his arms. "It'll be fine, I promise. You're just being a pessimist, is all. Lighten up, Judes, You're prettier when you smile."

Judy huffed, not entirely convinced. "Just swear that you'll try your hardest... For me, okay?"

The bitter tinge of distrust loomed behind her words, needling him with cold blades of guilt. She doubted him. of course she doubted him. He'd screwed her over when he'd came out about their relationship to her parents and turned what should've been a sweet family reunion into an afternoon of awkward conversation. The guilt clawed at his heart briefly before being crushed beneath the weight of his determination.

"Scout's honour, I'll be swapping shitty jokes with your Dad before the week is through," he swore, meaning it. He broke out into a confident, toothy smile. "Besides, the battle's half-won already-" he boasted, bounding out of bed and tossing on his shirt.

"Last time I checked, your Mom loved me."


	8. Chapter 8

_Dear Nick,_

 _If there's one thing I regret, it was sending you to elementary school._

 _You were such a smart boy, always nose-deep in those books of yours. At those parent-teacher conferences they only ever had good things to say about you. Your grades were substantial; straight A's for English and math. The only class you ever seemed to have a problem with was gym. But oh, you were such a fragile thing, always sick. If it wasn't your asthma playing up then it was a cold or a stomach bug or a flu. You were a runt. Our beautiful, smart, perfect little runt with a list of medical conditions so long I could barely keep track of them all. Your father never seemed to care. "Just you watch, Mary," he'd say. "He'll get stronger as he gets bigger. Just you watch."_

 _He saw something in you. And when I looked close enough, I could see it too. When I looked past your wheezing breath and your gaunt, skinny frame I found something - whether it was determination or just plain stubbornness I couldn't tell - but after you were done vomiting through a bellyache or sweating out a fever, you'd toss on your rucksack and head to school without so much as a complaint. You were strong. Stronger than I thought you were._

 _I should've known they'd bully you for it._

 _To think I hadn't known for so long, when it was so obvious. The way you'd duck your head to hide the bruises, the moody way you stormed off to your room when you came back from school, that fake smile you wore when I asked you how your days went. It'd been right there in front of me and I'd let it fly over my head in blissful ignorance. You'd been such a quiet child, Nick. So private. Even now I wonder why you kept their ridicule and their beatings from me. Was it pride or shame?_

 _It wasn't until you came back from that terrible cub scout fiasco that I learned the truth. I held you, a sobbing, broken thing in my arms, and you opened your heart up to me and poured out all the hurt. I didn't know what to say. I didn't say anything. You looked at me through teary eyes, begging me to tell you it'd all be fine, and I just stared back at you like an idiot. Because I couldn't lie to you. Because I couldn't bring myself to patch your heart back together and then send you to school the next day just so those horrible children could smash it all over again._

 _You looked towards your own mother for comfort and found none._

 _I can't read that back to myself without crying._

 _I held you tightly and I sobbed and I swore to myself that I'd never let you go and you just stared up at me, pinning me for the traitor I was. That night, you became a wiser and sadder fox. You never came to me looking for a shoulder to cry on ever again, and when he died three months later the last of that innocent little runt I knew died along with him. You became my Little Trooper, tough and hard and stony._

 _And I never saw you cry again._

 _Nick,_

 _I'm so sorry._

 _Love,_

 _Mom._

* * *

By the time Bonnie had finally hauled herself out of bed the sun was nearing the halfway point through the sky and the clock was getting ever closer to twelve. Ah. Seeing as she'd missed out on sleeping during the night (She'd been a little too busy trying to mentally bleach her brain), her body had made up for lost time and slept through the morning instead. Briefly she wondered why Stu hadn't woken her, being the early riser he was. Then she remembered that it was a Saturday, and despite being an early riser Stu considered himself a loving husband even more. As things usually went he'd probably left her to get her fill of sleep with a kiss on the cheek and a whispered 'sweet dreams' in her ear, the sweetheart.

Sadly, her dreams had been anything but sweet.

It was to her dismay that she had something of an eidetic memory - she remembered things as clear as day. The wet, thick moans of her daughter were still roaming the halls of of her mind, and the excited, submissive whimpers Nick made as Judy stroked him to a climax stuck to the underside of her memory like a troublesome wad of bubble gum tangled in her fur. Any dreams she'd managed to eke out through her meagre hours of sleep had been cloistered by Judy's heavy breathing and hounded by the image of Nick's muzzle as it dove plundering between her legs.

 _'Stop thinking about it,'_ she chided herself. ' _you think about it long enough and you'll soon have a looping sex tape in your head starring the charming Mr. Wilde and your not-so-innocent-anymore daughter. You want that, Bon?'_

Hell no she didn't. She needed a distraction. Something to focus on. She needed...

*Snff snff*

...Breakfast?

The smell of cooking food wafted from the kitchen, and she put all thoughts of sodomy aside. Bonnie reckoned herself a gentle person in all traits, but her appetite was the single exception. When she sat down for her breakfast, lunch, second lunch, pre-dinner snack, dinner, post-dinner nibbles, one-last-bite-before-bed meal or midnight fridge-raid, then you could bet your ass that she was going to help herself to seconds, thirds and then anything that was left on Stu's plate.

He could complain all he wanted. If he hadn't finished by the time she'd made it through her thirds, then he'd never really wanted it anyways.

She tossed on her vibrantly pink dressing down over her pyjamas and stumbled, still half-asleep, towards the stairs, cozying her feet into her fluffy slippers on the way out the door. Today should've been a happy day - The kids and Stu were both off on Saturdays, meaning that she was rarely left alone as she often was on weekdays, and somebody other than her had gone through the trouble of making breakfast. On any other day it'd be a promising start to the weekend, but she just couldn't stop ruining it for herself by thinking about what she'd seen last night.

What was she going to tell Nick and Judy?

Nothing, unless she wanted to take an already nasty situation and turn it into the unbridled shitstorm of the century. For starters she'd have to explain just what the hell she'd been doing watching, a question she wasn't too sure she had an answer for. She'd been passing by, the door had been open by a crack and her curiosity had more or less demanded that she take a peek. As to why she'd kept watching, that was anyone's guess, because frankly she hadn't a clue. She'd been too busy gaping at sight of the two of them tangling amongst the bed sheets to consider looking away.

Second of all she'd have to deal with all the ruined relationships it'd entail. In a house this small with a population so high, secrets had a nasty way of getting around and - well - not being secrets anymore. Word of this got out then the whole damned household wouldn't be able to so much as look at Judy without thinking to themselves _'my mom watched you make dirty with a fox.'_ It'd be one of those weird, embarrassing stories that'd follow her to her grave -and not the cute, charming kind of embarrassing either. The family would learn, then the neighbours, then the neighbour's neighbours, and then the whole town. In Bunnyburows, gossip flowed like water.

So yeah, it was her little secret and she'd fight tooth and claw to keep it that way.

She took the stairs one at a time, steadying herself on the handrail. Her joints hummed with a slow-burning pain that'd stick with her for the rest of the day. Wonderful. Turning fifty was hard. Turning fifty with a long, _long_ list of childbirths behind you was even harder, and Bonnie's womb was something of a grizzled veteran. After quite literally hundreds of pregnancies, her body was beginning to show some wear-and-tear. She and Stu had singlehandedly turned their family tree into a forest, and now she was paying the price. Her knees refused to bend all the way, her sockets rolled with a gritty stiffness and her back felt as if it were held together with duct tape and happy thoughts. She clenched her teeth through the discomfort, shuffling down the stairs at a snail's pace.

By the time Bonnie made her way through the kitchen door her aches and pains were bothering her so much that she didn't notice Nick until she pulled up a chair to sit down. He stood at the oven, poking at the sizzling contents of a frying with a spatula. Apprehension wracked her, chilling her from the inside like ice slid beneath her skin. What was she supposed to do? What was she supposed to say?

 _'Good morning, Nick! Have a good night? Yeah, I bet you did.'_

Alright, new plan: don't say anything. He hadn't see her yet, and the soft, furry soles of her feet made her quiet enough to sneak back through the door before he spotted her.

"Hey mom!" Anna, their third youngest daughter, chirped, skipping through the doorway and fucking her plans of sneaking away in the ass. Nick wheeled on his heel, addressing her with a smile which came to him so easily that she swore he must've known she'd been there from the beginning. Before she could so much as stammer out a clumsy 'hello', Anna was tugging at the hem of her gown, bouncing with the simple, raw excitement of a child. "Mistuh Nick's gonna cook us beckfast!"

"Morning, Mrs. Hopps," said Nick with a cheer which seemed perhaps the slightest bit patronising. He gestured towards the frying pan with the spatula. "I'm just fixing up a late breakfast for Anna and a couple of the other kids, hope you don't mind," he turned away briefly to adjust the pan on the hob, the food within hissing and sizzling like a bag of snakes. The delightful aroma reached her nose, and for a moment she forgot all about Nick and the things she'd seen him doing with her daughter and wondered just how the hell he managed to make it smell so heavenly.

Nick cleared his throat, subtly reminding her that a conversation was supposed to involve two people.

"*Ahem* uh, no, I don't mind at all," she said, desperately trying to stop her tongue from tripping over itself. "A-and good morning to you too!" she added, almost as if it were an afterthought. She rummaged her brain for an excuse - any excuse that'd get her away from Nick. She couldn't be near him, not with last night so fresh in her mind. They'd barely even said hello to each other and she was already straining to not to come off as a nervous wreck.

"Care to join us? There's more than enough here for an extra mouth." said Nick.

The little voice of reason in her head screamed in bloody anguish for all of two seconds before her famished appetite kicked it out of the driver's seat and steered Bonnie towards her doom.

"Well, if you're offering," she mumbled, drinking in the delectable smell of his cooking and wondering if it tasted as good as it smelled. If Judy woke up to this every morning then Bonnie envied her with a passion. "I mean, if you think I'd like what you're cooking there..."

"If I _think_ you'd like it?"

Nick's smile turned wolfish and his eyes took on a determined sheen and Bonnie realised all too late that she'd challenged him. Her clumsy tongue had gone and tossed down a gauntlet, and Nick had taken it up with a smirk. "Mrs Hopps, sit down in that chair right there and prepare to be amazed," he cupped a paw to his mouth and hollered. "Hey kids, your slop's on the table, get those fuzzy tails in here!"

Four of Bonnie's children tumbled excitedly into the room, babbling and arguing amongst themselves, just as they always did. Bonnie had long since given up on the pipe-dream of teaching her kids to get along. When you'd been a parent for as long as she had, you began to realise that disputes among children were inevitable, and if you valued your sanity you'd steer well clear of their disputes altogether. Instead, she offered them a half-hearted 'good-morning' which only two of them returned. Billy-Ray and Julia were a bit too busy yapping angrily at one another.

Nick interrupted before the bickering could devolve into all-out warfare. "If you guys wanna stand there yakking then I can always split your servings between everyone else." he said tartly. Julia and Billy-Ray had both scrambled into their chairs before Nick had so much as finished his sentence. Bonnie stared, awestruck.

He caught her amazed stare and replied with a knowing smile, leaning in to whisper to her. "A little something I learned from Judy: the fastest way to a Hopps' heart is through their stomach." he said with a sly wink before sliding a full plate in front of her.

Fried carrot slices, hash-browns cooked to perfection and tomatoes drizzled with melted cheese. All topped off with thin cuts of salted potato served as a side dish and a glass of orange juice. If _this_ was what Judy was waking up to every morning then Bonnie envied her with a passion. The best she could ever hope for from Stu was a piece of toast and a couple of burnt eggs if that. The man was a lover and a giver and all the things a husband should be but a competent cook he was not.

She speared a tomato on the end of her fork, popped it into her mouth, packed her bags and went to heaven.

It was food perfected. Kissed with a delicate pinch of spices and balancing nimbly on the line between cooked and well-done, the flavour exploded on her tongue like a bomb lathered in melted cheddar. She wrestled with the urge to cram the rest of them into her mouth, forcing herself to move slowly and appreciate the taste. She nibbled at the edge of a beautifully crisp hash-brown, sampled the potato slices seasoned with sea-salt and ate a piece of carrot before throwing any thought of civility aside and wolfing down the dish like a savage.

Nick watched leaned back against the oven, wearing a grin so wide it threatened to split his face.

* * *

She'd had seconds. She'd had thirds. She'd had fourths. She'd had Billy-ray's leftovers. And when Nick had offered her the pan, she'd practically tore it out of his paw and devoured the meagre scraps which remained.

Evidently, Bonnie Hopps was a hungry little bunny.

Idly Nick wondered where she put it all. From a sheer physical standpoint, she should've been bursting at the seams right about now. He'd piled enough on her plate to pop her stomach like a swollen water balloon three times over, and she'd smiled politely and asked for more. Her kids had followed in suit, tearing through their breakfasts like a shoal of fuzzy piranhas.

Well, at least now he knew which side of the family Judy got her voracious appetite from. Back at their apartment in Zootopia, an un-emptied plate was nothing short of heresy. Ever wonder how a rabbit so small managed to have so much energy? Three words: freakishly fast metabolism. The girl could tuck back a three-foot sandwich and her body would convert it into raw, unadulterated power in no time at all. The good news was that she could eat whatever she wanted and keep her trim waistline. The bad news was that their grocery budget made his wallet cry tears of blood.

"So I take it you liked it?" he purred pridefully. He'd spent three years as a part-time chef in one of the busiest all-you-can-eat restaurants in the Rainforest District, and that breakfast he'd cobbled together with the random bits and bobs he'd fished out of the cupboards had been nothing short of a culinary masterpiece. Of course she liked it. She'd loved it. Chalk up another point for Mr. Wilde, because he was owning this 'meet the parents' shtick!

"It was... Nice," said Bonnie, picking her words carefully and unknowingly snatching the wind out from beneath Nick's wings in the process. "Very... Creative."

His pride reeled beneath her blows. 'Nice'? 'Creative'? That was a consolation prize - the bronze medal of complements. Where was the gushing? Where was the 'Oh, thank you ever so much Nick, that was the best breakfast ever!"

"Best beckfast!" praised Anna, clapping her paws. "Best beckfast ever!"

Nick bandaged his self-esteem with the little bunny's commendation, grateful that at least the five-year old with a retainer was on his side. The rest of the table followed by Anna's example, tossing compliments his way. He ate them up with his best 'oh, it was nothing' smile, all the while wondering why Bonnie was being so quiet. She'd been a regular chatterbox throughout last night's dinner, and had practically talked his ear off on the ride here from the train station. So what was so different now? Cat got her tongue?

Her eyes roamed the kitchen, looking at everything other than him, whilst her fingers fidgeted and tousled with themselves. She was nervous, and making a damned poor job of hiding it, too. There was a secret looming in that pretty little head of hers, and Nick bet that if he really wanted to, he'd be able to fid out what it was. It was a knack of his - finding out things that other people didn't want him to. Honestly, if it weren't for Judy he'd have traded in his officer's uniform for a detective's badge long ago.

Bonnie didn't give him a chance to start digging for secrets. With a sudden and explosive speed she popped out of her chair, awkwardly clearing her throat even as she inched towards the exit. "Well! T-thank you for the lovely breakfast, Nick-"

"You want to know the recipes?" he interrupted smoothly in an attempt to bribe her into conversation. "It's all pretty basic stuff, I swear."

"I'm fine, really," she insisted with a smile so painfully forced that it hurt him just looking at it. His curiosity nibbled at him insatiably. With a smile that forced she'd have to be hiding something monumental, something huge, something...

...

 _'Oh my God,'_

...

...

...

"You didn't like the potato slices, did you?"

* * *

 **So this took its sweet time coming out.**

 **Sorry about that, work's been a little bit hectic as of late. And further apologies about the sudden end to the chapter, as well. Frankly I just wanted to be done with it. I've been trying to get this chapter out of my head for weeks now, and it's been a real stubborn bitch.**

 **Thankfully, I'm going to get things moving next chapter by exploring Bunnyburrows, so that should be fun.**


	9. Chapter 9

_Dear Nick,_

 _Do you remember our winters together?_

 _It all comes back to me with such clarity, even as everything else crumbles to dust. You always hated the cold and the snow - almost as much as I loved it. Your fevers would play up and your nose would run and you'd cough your throat raw the minute you stepped outside. So, you'd spend your Christmas holidays cooped up inside with me, either sat in front of the television or helping me make dinner or muzzle-deep in one of your books. Those were some of the best days of my life, you know. It's strange - how insignificant and by-the-numbers it seemed back then and how beautiful it all seems now. You never realise how good something is until it's far too late to appreciate it. It's a bittersweet feeling; knowing I'll probably never have something like that again, but being so lucky as to have had it with you in the first place._

 _They'd been simple days. Peaceful days. I usually took a couple weeks off work around Christmas, and your father made it something of a habit to get home early (he could never stand the cold), so we all got to spend those days together as a family, watching TV and making snow foxes and lazing about in front of the fireplace. All such simple, stupid little things, but all such precious memories, all the same._

 _Well, I woke up today, and it was snowing._

 _I had to pinch myself to tell if I was sleeping. Snow, mounded up on the roads and heaped atop of cars. Heaven knows where it all came from. I figured a snowstorm must've rolled over the neighbourhood whilst I was sleeping. Oh Nick, it was so beautiful. The sun had just crested the skyline, and light had that orange, early-morning hue to it, and it made the snow glow like it was on fire. Those calm, peaceful days from years past came rushing back to me, and I dared to get excited._

 _I watched TV._

 _I made a snow fox._

 _I lazed about in front of the fireplace._

 _The fulfilment never came. I never got content in that warm, fuzzy way I did when you and your father were around, and I never got the satisfaction of a day well spent. I sat inside, alone, and thought about how much nicer things would be if I had some company. That's when I realised_ _I never liked winters on account of the snow. I liked them because I got to spend time you._

 _Without you, there's no magic. There's no solace in a warm fire without someone there to enjoy it with me. There's no fun in making a snowfox if there isn't someone to wrap a scarf around its neck and tell me how funny it looks. There's no point to watching TV if there's nobody there to watch it with._ _I wish you'd come back, Nick. Because without you, the winter isn't special._

 _It's just cold._

 _Love,_

 _Mom._

* * *

"C'mon, c'mon!" nattered Judy, tugging restlessly at his arm. Nick followed her reluctantly, not that he had much choice in the matter. A deceptively small bunny had the strength of an ox. If she truly wanted to she could've dragged him through town by his ear without breaking so much as a sweat. Couple that with her relentlessly stubborn attitude and you got the idea as to who wore the pants in their relationship.

"Alright, alright, I'm coming. Enough with the hassling." he said. The sun glared into his eyes as she pulled him out into the lustrous front garden. Stu leaned grumpily against the hood of the pickup, fingers drumming impatiently against the dented bonnet and eyes simmering like two flecks of burning coal, glaring at him accusingly. Bonnie stood bent over a patch of freshly bloomed petunias, fiddling with them in a way that made it painfully obvious that she was just trying to look busy.

Nick caught his sigh before it came out of his mouth and forced it into cheery smile, reminding himself for the umpteenth time that he was doing this for Judy. Of course, that didn't mean he had to be happy about it.

He'd been having an alright day. He'd gotten to know the kids (who were only _half_ as annoying as he'd thought they'd be), fixed a five-star breakfast to impress Bonnie and a few of her children, and then plunked his ass down on the three-sizes-too-small-for-him sofa in front of the TV, content to spend the day staring at the idiot-box with whoever was there at the time. Great thing about living in a packed household? You'd never feel lonely. Pretty soon he'd been sharing the comically small sofa with five other bunnies, each of whom had made for decent conversation. Perhaps the sweet, sugary icing on the cake was that Stu was busy working the carrot patches out back, meaning that he could piss away the afternoon free from the bunny's death-glare.

Then Judy had gone and ruined it all by 'offering' to show him around town.

When it came to Judy, 'offering' was just another word for 'demand'.

Naturally, she'd 'offered' to take Bonnie and Stu along with them, naturally they'd politely refused, and naturally Judy had just 'offered' harder. So here they were, getting ready to head off into town on a trip none of them wanted to go on. Yesterday had been a long, arduous slog, Bonnie's oddly suspicious attitude had laid a dreary mood upon the morning and Nick wanted nothing more than to slump back into that sofa by the TV and rot his brain to MareTV. Winning over Judy's parents could wait for another day - preferably one where he didn't feel as shattered as he did now.

"Good morning, Mr. Hopps," greeted Nick with a chipper smile that looked so genuine he could've fooled himself. Stu repaid his efforts with an indifferent grunt, turning his head aside and pretending to scan the horizon. Wonderful. A whole day of this. Nick cast a pleading glance Judy's way, and she struck him down with a cheery grin.

"So, we all set?" she chirped merrily, blissfully unaware of how out of place her happiness was. She hooked an arm around Nick's and dragged him towards the pickup truck.

"Ahuh," harrumphed Stu.

"Yes, dear," sighed Bonnie.

"Champing at the bit, Judes, can't wait." said Nick with an easy smile, lying.

* * *

The Hopps family estate teetered on the outskirts of town, alone save for a sparse helping of cottages and a small convenience store frequented by perhaps a whole eight customers. It was the picture perfect presentation of the classic country bumpkin lifestyle - secluded, slow and peaceful. Bunnyburrows was the exact opposite.

They'd been driving for all of five minutes before Stu pulled into a car-park. When Nick had asked why, Judy had simply answered "so we don't run anybody over."

He hadn't understood what she'd meant until he saw it with his own eyes. The Streets of Bunnyburrows were so tightly packed with Bunnies that the idea of fitting a car through any of them was flat-out laughable. You'd be lucky to get a bike down the roads without one of them around the front wheel. It was borderline claustrophobic, and the shouting and murmurs and bustle of daily life all came together in a cacophony of noise.

Nick loved it.

There was something remarkably soothing about the white noise of everyday babble. It made him feel at home - or as home as a fox could amidst a town full of rabbits. Guessing from the amount of sideways glances and curious stares he was receiving, predators were something of a novelty in Bunnyburrows. He couldn't say he was particularly surprised; outside of Zootopia, predators and prey usually kept to their own cliques. Some people called it 'social engineering', Nick called it 'Mammalian nature'. Similar people got on better than different people, and you couldn't get more different than predator and prey.

 _'And Stu and Bonnie grew up here. Nick, old son, you've got your work cut out for you.'_

The town itself was far from what he was used to. Where Zootopia had been a concrete jungle, Bunnyburrows was a neat little forest of quaint homes and small businesses, broken up by the occasional 'burrow' - a sort of apartment block for bunnies. Rounded humps of yellowed brick, freckled with windows. Judy had explained the concept to him once: seeing as rabbits tended to multiply like, well, rabbits, standard housing soon became something of a luxury. Simply put there were too many bunnies and not enough room. So, to compensate for its ludicrously high population, some bright spark came up with the idea of shared housing on an astronomical scale. A single burrow could house hundreds, and if you didn't mind the cramped living conditions it wasn't all that bad a home - as long as you didn't have any issues with lack of privacy, that was. Judy had explained to him that a lot of the rooms were shared, and you couldn't so much as walk six feet in any direction before bumping into someone. Apparently it made going to the bathroom something of a nightmare.

Judy tugged at his arm, pointing towards a quaint bakery tucked snugly between a pair of burrows. With its white and pink striped curtains, ornately wooden tables out front and beautifully paw-carved oak sign hung over the storefront, it carried an air to it which Nick could only describe as 'cosy'. An honest, up-front charm of a family-run business - something you'd be hard pressed to find on the streets of Zootopia, where everything belonged to the chain restaurants, big-name fashion companies and supermarkets.

"Nice place. You thinking about stopping for lunch?" asked Nick, slightly hopeful. He could smell the rich, tarty scent of blueberry pie all the way from here. He hadn't tasted freshly baked blueberry pie for years, instead sustaining himself on those factory-made pies packed in foil and plastic, made for the microwave. Industrial food, as he liked to call it.

"That's Gideon's bakery - you remember Gideon, right? That fox I told you about?" said Judy.

And just like that, Nick wasn't hungry anymore. "You mean the one who beat you up and stuffed your head in a toilet bowl?" asked Nick, perhaps a little more forcefully than he intended.

"Yes, about sixteen years ago, when we were about eight," said Judy, her voice carrying a slight rebuke. "People DO change, Nick."

"Not in my experience, sweetheart,"

"Says the con-artist turned cop?"

"Touché, Carrots, touché..." he said, lining his words with doubt.

Judy had spilled the beans on her rough childhood within the first few days Nick met her. They'd just cracked the Bellewether case, and Nick had taken Judy out to his favourite watering hole to celebrate. She'd gotten wasted, he'd taken her home and she'd capped off the night by drunkenly crying on his shoulder, blubbering about all the horrible ways the school bully used to torment her.

It'd pissed him off more than it should've. Bullies existed on a simple concept: kids were kids, and kids did stupid shit to one another. For most people that'd be a fair enough reason for forgiveness, but Nick wasn't most people. He was a guy who'd spent his childhood as the plaything of children bigger than him, and as far as he was concerned "he was just a kid" didn't make it all okay. An asshole was an asshole at age five or thirty.

Judy threw a disapproving frown his way, scolding him with her eyes. "Y'know you really aught to have more faith in people, Nick. Gideon was never a bad person, he just had a rough upbringing. His dad..." she paused, something nasty on the tip of her tongue. "Well, lets just say his dad wasn't the nicest person."

"Uhuh," grumbled Nick, suddenly wanting nothing more than to forget all about Gideon Grey and his friendly little bakery and get on with his walk. Of course, Judy had other plans.

"So, wanna grab something to eat?" asked Judy conversationally.

"Maybe later, Carrots." he replied firmly.

She sighed, casually shrugging off his rejection. "Fine, suit yourself," she said nonchalantly before turning to Stu and Bonnie. "Hey Mom, Dad, mind if we stop by Gideon's, I'm getting sort of hungry."

Stu nodded approvingly. "Sure thing, hon. Gotta say I'm getting sort of peckish myself. How's about you, Bon'?"

Bonnie giggled into her paw. "The day I turn my nose up at one of Gideon's muffins is the day I drop dead, dear. "

Judy spared Nick a cunning, victorious glance over her shoulder. "Hear that, Nick? Looks like we're eating at Gideons." she remarked smugly before following her parents towards the bakery.

Nick seethed to himself before burying his displeasure and following in tow, admitting defeat. Looks like he was shaking the paw of the fox who'd fucked with the girl he loved. Wonderful. Somehow his bad day just found a way to get worse. Despite it all, he still managed to muster a dry, humourless laugh. As much as he hated to admit it, Judy had just pulled off a fine hustle.

Sly bunny.


	10. Chapter 10

_Dear Nick,_

 _Did you ever find love?_

 _It's a personal question, I know, but I can't help but wonder. By the time you'd reached ten there wasn't a more handsome predator on the block, and I caught all the dreamy sideways glances the girls would throw at you - the ones you tried stubbornly to ignore. It surprised me, at first; my shy, bookish little boy being the apple of every little girl's eye, but when I stopped and thought about it, it made perfect sense. You took after your father far more than you ever did me, and he'd always been an infamously smooth charmer. You had his magic: an alluringly mysterious complexity, hidden - but not too hidden - behind a mask of stony indifference. Somewhere within those darkly brooding green eyes, alive with a determination that refused to be broken no matter how hard the bullies and the name-callers beat at it, there was a promise of a thousand secrets._

 _All that, and you had the face of an angel to boot. No wonder you hated valentines day so much - the girls must've hounded you from dawn till dusk!_

 _You never paid them any attention. It was cruel of you, in a way - to be so enticing yet always out of reach. They'd pluck up their courage and risk embarrassment, and you never so much as dignified them with an answer. How many hearts did you break? Tens? Dozens? All except one - that one prey girl with the horns. You remember her, don't you? The one about twice your size, with a heart of gold and a mouthful of braces? That foreign girl who everybody else ostracized for talking funny? Out of all the ones you could've chosen you went with her - the social outcast._

 _I've always respected you for that. You could've settled on one of the popular girls and piggybacked your way to schoolyard fame, but instead you went with your heart and gave that meek foreign girl without a friend in the world somebody to call her own. A predator dating a prey. You can imagine the fuss that kicked up among the parents. Hers' never seemed to mind, but I don't think the prejudices were really much of a thing where they came from (that and neither of them spoke a lick of English, so I don't think they understood what all the commotion was about, anyways)._

 _Me? I just settled on being surprised - Pleasantly surprised, that is. You were usually so detached that I sometimes had trouble gleaning any emotion from you at all, but when it came to her you were a different person all together. You opened up and told her all the things you refused to tell anyone else. What scared you, what drove you, the things that kept you up at night and the things that helped you sleep. To hell with what the media say; prey or not that girl was good for you. You spoke to me more often, you smiled a little wider and on a good day if I was especially lucky I'd even get to hear you laugh. After what must've years spent in the dark you'd finally decided to come and step out into the light and be my Little Trooper again._

 _And then she left._

 _Her mother had found herself a cushy job somewhere downtown amongst the high-rises and the skyscrapers - a desk job that paid enough to keep food on their plates and cash in their pockets. I know it sounds like a cruel sacrifice, but I can't blame them for it, not really. They were struggling to pay the bills as it was, and her mother had worn herself down to the bone to get that job. She couldn't let it all go to waste for the sake of puppy-love._

 _And so they moved away, and we never saw heads or tails of them again._

 _You didn't cry. You didn't sob. You didn't run to my arms and wail about how unfair and mean it was for the world to piece together your broken heart just to crush it and scatter it to the wind all over again._ _You sighed, slunk off back indoors and returned to your books, as if you'd known this would happen from the start. It wounded me more than all the tears in the world ever could. Life had served you a bitter drink, but by then you'd tasted it so often that it didn't really bother you anymore. With one swift motion, the girl you'd loved had managed to do what all the bullies and the name-callers could not - break your spirit._

 _There was never a second girlfriend. By the time you went to school the next day you'd already set love aside, labelling it as the failed experiment it was, and we never spoke of that sweet little foreign girl ever again._

 _Nick,_

 _Love's a fickle, nasty thing. It'll kick us when we're down and it'll trip us up when we dare to try and get back on our feet - but for all the pain and hardships and heartaches, it's worth it. Now, you might not believe that, but I do. Love is what gave me all those happy years with your father, love is what keeps me writing these silly little letters to nobody and love is what gave me you. Don't lose faith in love, Nick. It's a mean bitch, but if you stick with it long enough, it'll show you its soft side. You just have to have patience._

 _P.S. Whatever happened to that girlfriend of yours, anyways? Robert from across the street tells me she's some big-hit pop-star nowadays, but he's always been one to make a mountain out of a mole hill. Besides, as I remember it your little Gazelle had the singing voice of a rusty chainsaw._

* * *

Gideon Grey was not at all how Nick had imagined him.

Nick had taken the pieces Judy had given him and cobbled them together into a crude representation of the classic schoolyard bully. Monstrously tall and crudely powerful with arms heaped with muscle, legs built like tree trunks and a mouth set in a perpetual sneer that wouldn't go away no matter how hard you willed it to. He'd imagined a broken-nosed thug raised on bad influences and moulded out of spite with a chip on his shoulder that must've been there since he was born.

Instead, he got a chubby fox in a pink apron, busy serving tables.

Said fox wearing said pink apron was sandwiched between a pair of said tables, platters brimming with pastries balancing precariously in either paw yet somehow refusing to fall, even as he clumsily jostled his weighty frame between chairs and squeezed past customers. The bakery was practically overflowing with patrons, resembling the Atlantic ocean if one were to drain it of water and refill it with rabbits. The sheer density of bunnies made it a wonder as to how anybody actually managed to get anywhere. It was like the tube station back home at a particularly hectic rush-hour, only twice as bad and at least three times as cute.

Yet somehow, despite his klutz-like stumbling, the fox managed to wade his way through the sea of bunnies. Behind his awkward waddle there was a careful balance and precision honed to a needle-point through years of dealing with crowded sidewalks and corridors stacked wall to wall with bucked teeth and fluffy tails. He pushed, but never shoved, offering up heartfelt "sorry's" and "excuse me's" with every delicately measured footstep.

His eyes set upon them, and his round face lit up with raw, simple joy. "W-well howdy there Missus Hopps! An' I-is that there Mister Hopps I see? Ain't like you to be comin' all the way out here just to see lil' old me!" he drawled with a syrupy southern accent marred by the occasional light stutter, as if his tongue moved a tad too slow and was prone to get itself tangled up in his words. He set the pair of platters down on a table and made his way over to them in his slow, meandering tip-toe between the masses of patrons. "Sorry 'bout the crowd, place is awfully popular round these hours," he apologized with a bashful smile which radiated honesty.

"Afternoon Gideon," greeted Stu with a comfortable familiarity, reaching out to shake his paw. Nick didn't know which pissed him off worse: Stu accepting Gideon so readily even as he quashed Nick's attempts at friendship or the fact that he was willing to shake the same paw which had given Judy the three scars she bore across her right cheek, hidden just beneath the fur. She'd never given him the full story, but he'd managed to piece it together with the snippets she'd let slip. She'd been six, she'd caught Gideon pushing around the other kids, she tried to stop it. Rest of the story wrote itself. A hot dagger of anger lanced at his heart and Nick had to bite the rim of his lip to stop himself from spitting out an accusation right there and then. He buried the anger - let it ice over into something more cold and calculating.

"Howdy there Judy, I-I-I ain't seen heads or tails of you for somethin' around a year now! How's the police work?" asked Gideon conversationally, casting her a familiar smile which Nick could've tore from his face.

"Oh you know, something a little different every day," replied Judy with a bashful wave of her paw. "Nothing too crazy. How's about you? I've never seen this place from the inside before - it's real nice. You own it?"

"Mmmhmm, yes ma'am. Used to be somethin' of an eyesore 'fore me and Travis over there fixed it up," he explained, jabbing a thumb towards the gangly ferret manning the cash register. He spared them a hearty wave of acknowledgement, favouring Gideon with a sly wink before diving back into his work. "Uhuh, must've spent the whole summer gettin' this place up to snuff," he continued, face glossing over with a subtle pride as he took in the tarty colours and intoxicatingly doughy smells of his surroundings.

"Anyhow, that's enough about borin' old me. Who's your friend?" he asked, turning his eyes to Nick. "Ain't many foxes 'round these parts 'sept for the Greys, and I'll be darned if you're from my patch - ain't a Grey out there who'd be caught dead wearing a tie." He balanced his chin upon his thumb and forefinger, scrutinising him intensely with a long, drawn out "Hmmmm". Finally, after a pause that'd been just long enough to be awkward, Gideon stumbled on his eureka moment. "You one of them city fellers?"

"Nicholas Wilde, ZPD." he stated in a stately, professional tone he saved for the people he particularly disliked. He shook his paw stiffly, offering up an even stiffer smile. " I'm an associate of Judy's; Partner on duty, boyfriend in my free time-" he locked his eyes with Gideon, oiling them with apprehension. "-she told me a lot about you." his words carried a sharp accusation, and judging by the daunted droop of Gideon's face, it'd cut deeply.

"... Right," said Gideon with a pained understanding, shrinking back from Nick in something that could've been remorse before huffing dejectedly and steeling with a stubborn sort of determination. "How's about I get you guys a table?"

"Would you, dear? I'm famished," cooed Bonnie, thoroughly charmed by the fox's innocent dopiness. Nick didn't know which surprised him more: her gullibility or her monstrous appetite. A breakfast as big as the one he'd gave her and she _still_ wanted more.

"Sure thing, Mrs. Hopps! I'll get ya'll one out by the window! Uh, you wouldn't mind helpin' me set the table, would ya, Mr. Wilde? It's a whole lot easier with two pairs of paws, and Travis is sorta busy..." he said, speaking the words as if they were a plea for mercy. Something sad lingered on his face - a mess of regret and heartache, barely concealed behind a cardboard smile. A traitorous spec of pity nibbled at his conscience, and Nick would've snuffed it out had it not been for Judy, staring at him expectantly over Gideon's shoulder. She wanted him to play nice and make friends, and if the watery, beseeching sheen to her eyes was anything to go by, he'd be pissing over her feelings something terrible if he were to tell Gideon to go fuck himself.

"Alright, sure," Grumbled Nick, taking care as to sound as unenthusiastic as possible.

"Thanks a bunch, Mr. Wilde - mighty kind of ya. C'mon, table's this way."

He led him away from the Hopps family and towards the table, , and as he took the tablecloth in his paws and flattened it neatly over the surface of the table, he skittishly began to talk.

"So, uh, I don't really need any help with this," he said. "I-I just thought it might be for the better if we talked some... 'fore ya'll start comin' to conclusions."

Nick didn't bother with a reply. The glare he gave Gideon could've iced over an ocean - he let it do the talking for him. Whatever confidence Gideon had had shrivelled sourly beneath that glare, and Nick supposed it must've spoke pretty loudly.

"I-I'm gettin' the feeling you don't like me none, Mr. Wilde,"

"Very acute." answered Nick coldly.

Gideon sighed, "I-I, uh, I'm guessin' Judy gave you the whole story, right?"

"Down to the last detail."

He nodded solemnly, scratching wistfully at the back of his neck. "Yeah..., I thought so. Judy ain't never been one to keep things to herself, has she?" he asked, trying to bait some casual small talk out of him, if only to lighten the mood. When he realised he wouldn't get an answer out of him, Gideon reluctantly continued.

"I don't imagine it paints me in too good a light," he huffed. "I was... I wasn't somethin' to be proud of way back when. When you're young, you tend not to give much thought towards what you're doin'... Or how it might make other folk feel..." Gideon shuddered, memories of days gone by swelling to the surface. His eyes glossed over with a glassy film of tears, and when he spoke his voice cracked like a teenager's. "I'd do an awful lot to take them things I did back, Mr. Wilde. An awful lot of things... But I can't. The past is the past, and it ain't gonna change now matter how hard I will it too. You understand, don't you?"

Nick hated that he did. The claws of apprehension that'd been resting on his shoulders slackened ever so slightly. Regret had been an acquaintance of Nick's for a long while, and he understood the cruel ways better than anyone else. It's relentless hounding, the bruising clamp of its iron fist around his heart, the scathingly painful way it lashed at him with sweet dreams of what could've been - always there in the back of his mind yet forever out of reach...

"Maybe," he admitted.

"So... Maybe you'd be willin' to offer me a chance?" asked Gideon, suddenly hopeful. "T-there ain't no takin' back what I did, but that don't mean I can't have a chance to make up for it somehow. That's all I'm asking for, Mr. Wilde; a chance. I know I've made some stupid mistakes and I know you've got every reason in the world to hate me, but everyone deserves a chance, don't they?"

 _'Everyone deserves a chance...'_ he mulled it over in his head _,_ systematically categorising all the reasons why 'giving a chance' to someone like Gideon was a bad idea. Nick knew people. He knew how and why they acted the way they did, the reasoning behind their erratic behaviours and the purpose of all the little cruelties they inflicted upon one another. He also knew that they didn't change. Gideon could preach redemption and reformation all he liked; a wolf in sheep's clothing was still a wolf, and a bully in a frilly pink apron was still a bully.

 _'And a fox in a police uniform is still a swindler, am I right, Nicky?'_

The voice of reason spoke up and tossed a cold, hard truth into his lap: _he'd_ changed. Considering he'd gone from remorseless con-artist to straight-and-narrow cop, he'd changed plenty, and if he could go from small-time criminal to a high and mighty police officer then Gideon could've just as well gone from schoolyard bully to apologetic baker.

emphasis on 'could've'.

Still, he supposed he'd have to give the guy a chance now. The whole 'innocent until proven guilty' drabble that'd forcefully made itself part of his life ever since he'd graduated from the academy more or less demanded it. That was the problem with upholding the law; it forced you to act lawful. Nick offered Gideon his paw, and it took him a moment to realise that he wanted him to shake it. "You promise not to make me regret this?"

Gideon grasped his paw firmly and shook it, smiling like a man who'd been pardoned from death row. "promise."

* * *

Nick was beginning to regret this.

His bloated belly nudged uncomfortably into the rim of the table, swollen with pastry. It gurgled at him angrily, furious that he'd stuffed it so mercilessly. He stared down at the contents of his plate, and the behemoth, half-eaten slab of blueberry pie almost seemed to stare back at him, gloating victoriously. Considering that he was usually a light eater who was meticulously picky with his food, the sheer amount he'd managed to tuck back was an ode to the meal's quality.

Across the table, Bonnie was busy scraping the last remnants of carrot cake from her plate. Her eyes, however, were set upon his hefty chunk of leftovers with the fixation of a hawk. Nick wordlessly nudged the plate towards her, and she offered up a quiet 'thank you,' in return before dragging the pie off to its fate. A moment later it was gone, lost to the black, depthless void Bonnie called a mouth.

Meanwhile, Gideon had pulled up a chair between Judy and Stu and was chatting with the two of them amiably. He'd sat with them throughout the meal, keeping his demeanour talkative and friendly throughout. He'd asked Stu about his business and listened raptly as he'd prattled on about everything there was to know about carrot farming, he'd gotten tangled up in a kind-natured argument with bonnie over 'carrots versus blueberries' and he'd even queried Nick on what it was like being 'the very first fox cop'. Nick had entertained him, and in turn Gideon had surprised him by not only showing interest, but genuine awe - as if a fox passing basic training was the equivalent of the second coming of Christ.

Gideon had been a regular chatterbox, which was just fine with Nick - if his scamming years had taught him anything, it was that you could learn everything you could ever want to know about a person if you simply sat back and listened to them talk. Behind his simple, farm boy drawl there were a hundred little stories, hidden within the weave of his words. The familiar way he'd spoken with Judy, the merry rise in his voice when Nick had grudgingly admitted that he liked his pie, the bashful giggle he made when anyone threw a compliment his way-

the way he avoided the subject of his parents.

When you spend as much time roaming the less-than-hospitable areas of Zootopia as Nick had, you tend to get acquainted with some less-than-hospitable people, most of whom had been raised by less-than-hospitable parents. And naturally, you can only know someone for so long before their secrets become your secrets - whether you want them or not. Over the years, Nick had gathered himself an impressive roster of sob-stories, plucked from overheard conversations and forced upon him by mouthy drunkards making casual small talk. It almost seemed to follow a pattern: it'd never be the one who'd grown up with the parents from hell who'd come out and give you the ugly details of their childhood, but the person next to them.

What was it that Judy had told him earlier? _'His dad... Well, lets just say his dad wasn't the nicest person...'_

Nick sighed. In all his worldly wisdom he'd never have thought a place like Bunnyburrows to be home to abusive parents. It'd came off as too innocent - too pure. Compared to the neon-lathered back-alleys and lonely, decrepit streets he'd grown up in, it was practically a fantasy world, torn from the pages of a fairy-tale and animated with a charmingly rural life. The more he thought about it the more stupid it seemed. It didn't matter where they lived; people were still people, and people have an awful tendency to do nasty things.

A thimble of pity nibbled at Nicks heart, getting bigger by the minute. Looking at him now, Gideon seemed far more the victim than he ever was the perpetrator. A victim to bad luck and - if his hunch was on the money - a worse father. Across the table, Gideon turned his eyes to him - those wetly blue, mournful eyes which always seemed to glitter with a thin glossing of remorse. Something sad cowered behind those eyes - something he'd seen plenty of times before in the eyes of people he'd used to call friends, carefully concealed and sternly guarded but always there.

"You enjoy the chow Mr. Wilde?" he asked, hopeful.

"Well, I've had better..." he mused mockingly, "But I think I'll settle on 'pretty good', best pie I've had in a while." he flashed Gideon a thumbs up and a lazy smile.

Gideon's face lit up with an almost childish glee, and whatever pitiful thing had been grovelling behind those eyes shrank away, dampened by a simple joy. " w-why shucks, mr. Wilde, s'only somethin' I put together in a hurry. If ya'll think that's pretty good then you should taste what me an' Travis over there can rustle up on Tuesdays - place is always less busy 'round then, y'see, gives us time to work..."

Nick reclined into his chair, letting the fox natter on and keeping a close watch on that pitiful little glint in his eye. He reckoned It was beginning to look an awful lot like remorse...

* * *

By the time they'd left it was roughly six O'clock, give or take five-thirty. The horizon had waxed over in a red haze of sunset, and the sky had already taken on a smattering of stars to go along with the faint outline of the moon. Behind them, propped up against the doorframe of the bakery, Gideon was waving them a hearty goodbye.

After metric shitload of deliberation, Nick had deemed him an 'alright' guy. Far from the highest praise, but the best anyone could've hoped for. A few fleeting moments of idle conversation between mouthfuls of pie was hardly enough to judge someone on, but from what he'd seen, he seemed like a straight enough character. Before he came to a proper conclusion he'd have to go back there some other time for some proper one-on-one face time with Gideon-

And pie. A lot more pie.

Judy hung dreamily on Nick's arm, glowing with an almost motherly sort of pride over how maturely he'd handled the situation. He basked in the heady warmth of her admiration like a lizard beneath the sun. It felt good to know someone thought highly of him, and it felt even better to know that person was Judy. It left him with a hearty sense of fulfilment that Stu simply just to ruin by opening his damned mouth.

Stu harrumphed, and reality came crashing down on his shoulders like a bucket of iced water. Stu had wheeled on his heel to address Bonnie and Judy, taking extra care to ignore Nick entirely. The thin glazing of happiness he'd bore for Gideon spiralled into the seething indifference Nick had somewhat gotten used to by now. "Girls, I'm gonna have to scram; I promised Russell from next door I'd give him a hand with fixing that damned fridge of his - imagine he must be getting pretty angsty 'round about now. Old Russell never had much in the way of patience."

"Want me to come with you?" asked Judy, and Nick couldn't help but feel a little betrayed. The only reason he'd come out here in the first place was for _her_ sake, she couldn't leave now! That's like starting a dinner party and bailing before they reached the main course! Besides, she was busy. Who else was going to tell him how great he was for buddying up with Gideon? Bonnie? The rabbit had been practically muted towards him for the whole day!

He must've let his despair show, because Stu accepted Judy's offer with gusto. "Sure, Old Russell will be over the moon! How long's it been since you saw each other last?" he asked.

"Too long. Does he still have that funny lisp?"

"Have it? If anything it's gotten worse!" he exclaimed, and the two of them giggled like a pair of children caught up in an inside joke Nick really wished he knew the punchline to, because he sure as hell wasn't laughing.

"Bonnie, hun, you don't mind if Judy an' me take the old wagon, do you? Russell's is plenty o' miles away and you can always catch the bus back home."

Bonnie was taking her abandonment even worse than Nick was: her expression was equal parts surprise and dread, neither of which did much in the way of inspiring Nick's confidence. Judy was jumping ship on a whim and the only person she'd be leaving him with was the one who seemed hell-bent on avoiding him like the plague. Heck of a way to top off what could've been a nice afternoon.

With a mournful sigh of defeat, Bonnie surrendered. "Alright, alright. You did promise, I suppose..." she paused to briefly rummage through her pockets. "Uhuh, I've got plenty in the way of change. A bus fare for two wouldn't be a problem." she said, desperately trying to keep the anxiousness from her voice.

Stu barely even bothered with a goodbye before heading back towards the car park with Judy in tow. "See ya back at the house, Nick - and don't be afraid to have some fun without me!" she exclaimed, giving him a sly wink over her shoulder, as if her intentions weren't obvious enough already. She wanted him to make friends. With her mother. Who, last time he checked, wanted nothing more than to get far, far away from him.

He threw his eyes on Bonnie, a heap of fretted nerves wearing an awkward, forced smile. Whatever she was hiding from him must've been something monumental to get her panties in _this_ much of a twist, and Nick found himself taken with the sudden, inexorable urge to find out what that something was. It was an aggravating habit he'd picked up from Judy. If there was a truth to be found, then you could bet your ass that he'd do everything in his power to find it, even if it meant suffering through a whole load of awkward conversation with a bunny who seemed determined to keep her lips sealed.

Stalwartly he armed himself with a grin shit through with charm and lined with the slightest hint of seduction.

"So Bonnie... How's about a night out?"

* * *

 **Bet you thought I was dead, didn't you?**

 **If you're looking for an explanation, I don't have one. I do, however, have plenty of flimsy excuses.**

 **I got wrapped up in work,**

 **I couldn't stop procrastinating,**

 **I had an idea for another story and tried writing a beginning to it,**

 **I couldn't stop procrastinating,**

 **I bought System Shock 2 on Steam sale and got hooked,**

 **I couldn't stop procrastinating,**

 **I had imperatively important shitposts to make on 4chan,**

 **Did I mention that I procrastinated? Because I did. A lot.**


	11. Chapter 11

_Dear Nick,_

 _I got drunk today. Drunk as a skunk. Pissed as a fart, as your dad would say._

 _Why? I don't know. I sort of lost the reason between my sixth and seventh shot and couldn't be bothered to look for it. It's a Friday night, I don't have anything on my 'to do' list and I'm feeling all sorts of mopey and that's reason enough for me._

 _It's bourbon, if you're curious. The cheap shit they sell on special offer down at the supermarket. I got my paws on it for six dollars and frankly it's worth about three. It tastes like I'm swigging motor oil. Still, it gets the job done. I'm sitting in some beat up old recliner with the TV on and the ceiling fan whirring and I haven't been this happy in a long while. Sad, isn't it? To be so miserable that the highlight of your week is lazing in front of the TV, drunk and alone and writing letters to a kid who's never going to read them._

 _Well, screw it. It's a vice and I'm taking it and nobody's going to stop me. If there's anything this used up old vixen learned after two decades alone in this depressing little neighbourhood, it's that happiness is a rare commodity, and you'd do well to take it wherever you can get it - and it just so happens you can find plenty of it at the bottom of a bottle._

 _Things should be better than this. I should've moved on years ago. I should've tossed the photo albums in the trash and burnt the mementos and gotten on with my life. But I can't. Not when there's a chance you're still out there. Not when there's some wayward chance that I'll see you again. Not when I'm waking up every Friday to find my post box stuffed to the brim with dirty money from a son who doesn't want to see heads or tails of me._

 _Yeah, I got another one of your 'packages' today. How else do you think I paid for the booze?_

 _Nick, I don't know if it's the alcohol writing this or me, but things would be simpler if you'd just died. If you'd choked on your morning cereal or strolled in front of a car or just spontaneously dropped dead on some sunny afternoon instead of leaving me like you did, then chances are I wouldn't need this bottle. I wouldn't need to sob myself to sleep every night, wondering what I did wrong. I wouldn't have to bother with worrying about you every minute of every day. I wouldn't have to endure the constant torture of having that little star of hope dangling over my head, whispering into my ear that maybe - just maybe - you'll be back some day._

 _Maybe then I'd finally have the guts to tie a noose and end this shit._

 _Love,_

 _Mom._

* * *

Bonnie drummed her fingers agitatedly against the countertop, trying as hard as she could to will herself out of existence. Her heart was a raving jackhammer in her chest and there was a sinkhole at the bottom of her stomach getting wider by the minute. Her nerves were, for lack of a better word, fucked. Nick sat next to her with a dastardly smile penned neatly across his face, propped up by an elbow and leaning against the counter, rich with a swagger that came to him as naturally as breathing. Oddly, the homely backdrop of the 'Bouncing Bunny' bar fit Nick like a tailored suit... If suits were made out of drunkards and alcohol, that is.

Settled by the outskirts of town centre, away from the bulk of Bunnyburrows, the bar was something of a frequented watering hole for bunnies such as herself who lived away from the hustle and bustle of life amongst the burrows. That meant that The Bouncing Bunny had a smaller scope of frequent customers than the other two watering holes in town: The Raunchy Rabbit and The Hassled Hare - something which Bonnie reckoned more than validated the borderline-extortionate prices of the drinks. Five dollars might seem a little steep for a beer, but the fact that she got to drink it in peace and quiet made it worth every last cent. When you're a mother to a small army of kits living in one of the most densely populated towns this side of the hemisphere, a couple minutes of blessed silence felt like nothing short of a godsend.

Why, out of all the places, did she choose to take Nick here? Well, there were a multitude of reasons; none of which she could remember for the life of her. Nick had asked her what there was to do around Bunnyburrows, she'd panicked, blurted out the first thing that'd come to mind, and that thing just so happened to be the Bouncing Bunny. Over three decades of taxing parenthood The Bouncing Bunny had become something of a haven for Bonnie; maybe it was the broodingly dark crimson walls or maybe it was the worn barstools which creaked in just the right way when she went to mount them or maybe it was the smooth, glossy feel of the notched oak counter beneath her paws as she leaned into it, but the place came off as comfortably seedy in all the right ways.

Speaking of 'right ways', Nick had been probing her defences in all the wrong ones. It'd started out innocently enough: a kind inquiry into why she was so red in the face here and an offhand comment about how 'uptight' she seemed there. However, it soon became clear that Nick had himself an agenda. He knew she had something to hide and he wasn't at all opposed to letting her know it. All throughout the night Nick had been digging at her, chipping away at her resolve with simple observations like "you cold. Mrs. Hopps? You're shivering live a mouse trapped in an icebox," or "Looking sort of jumpy for a rabbit on a night out."

His tongue danced around the subject, flirting with it but never going all the way and throwing out an accusation. It took her a while to realise that he was teasing her, in his own devilish way. By now it was blatantly obvious that she knew something he didn't, and whether she was going to tell him what that something was wasn't a question of 'if', but 'when'. All this poking and prodding - that was just his way of making 'when' come around a little sooner.

At this point it was an inevitability. Sooner or later Nick was going to tire of the little word-games and ask her straightforward just what the hell she was keeping from him, and then she'd be seven kinds of screwed. She was struggling as it was - he'd laid out his questions intricately, in a way that avoiding one would mean stepping on another. He'd politely ask why she was sweating so much, and she'd tell him it was too hot. Then he'd nonchalantly remind her that she'd been shaking like a leaf five minutes ago because apparently it was too cold. She'd tangle herself up in her own answers and Nick would stand back and preen smugly as she tripped and tumbled over contradictions. As far as she could tell the safest thing she could do was restrict herself to communicating through nonchalant 'mmhmm's and polite nods.

"You okay, Mrs. Hopps?" asked Nick, feigning a slight concern. A mischievous spark of satisfaction twirled through his eyes as she scrambled through her brain for excuses.

"Mmhmm," she answered, nodding politely.

Flawless strategy, really.

"You sure?" he pushed, "You're looking sort of pale."

Bonnie shrugged nonchalantly, all the while seething on the inside. He'd bled her dry of excuses ages ago, and now she was hanging on by the skin of her teeth. Nick knew, of course. The devious lilt to his smile made it painfully obvious. He knew, and instead of just putting her out of her misery and straight-up demanding the truth out of her, he was content to bat her about like a new-born kitten playing with a yarn ball.

But what Nick didn't know as that Bonnie had an agenda of her own. A plan she'd oh so deviously masterminded roughly five minutes ago and mulled to perfection as she nursed back the pint of beer she'd ordered:

Get him drunk, break the news to him as gently as she could and pray that he didn't freak out.

Alright, so perhaps it wasn't the greatest of plans, but so far it was the best she could come up with. The way things were going, Nick would have the truth out of her regardless of whether she wanted to tell him or not. It was only a matter of time before he cornered her and squeezed out a confession, so she may as well give him one straight whilst he was more... Docile.

She'd already paid for his first drink. He held it in his paw; something exotically orange, sporting a slice of lemon and served in a tall, frosted glass. The sort of thing you'd expect to see on a Hawaiian beach rather than some scruffy, country-town pub. Say what you would about the Bouncing Bunny - you couldn't fault it for its variety.

With a casual toss of his wrist Nick emptied the rest of his glass down his mouth, and Bonnie allowed herself a small pat on the back. One down, a hundred more to go. By the time she broke the news she wanted him to be smashed enough not to care - and considering what she had to tell him, he'd have to be far and beyond the realms of 'tipsy' to not care.

She waved over the bartender, asking for refills. Nick went for his wallet, but Bonnie beat him to the punch, slapping a fistful of dollars down on the table and politely asking the bartender to leave the bottle and fetch them a second glass. Something told her this was going to be a night she'd rather forget, and nothing bleached the memory quite as well as alcohol.

"So you come here often, Mrs. Hopps?" asked Nick, surprising Bonnie with something that very well might've been a genuine attempt at conversation. For a brief moment she allowed herself to hope that he'd miraculously decided to give up on hounding her for secrets and settle on normal small-talk instead. Then she caught the scheming glint in his eye and she tossed her hopes head-over-ass out the window. This wasn't surrender, it was a short, five-minute coffee break between all his prying. She decided to play along, mindful not to let her guard down.

"Sometimes... well, a lot of times. It's sort of a hideaway for me. Life with kids can get a little hectic from time to time and some times it's nice to..."

"Drink away the stress?"

"... Something like that." she admitted shamefully. "That sounds bad, doesn't it? Mother of over two hundred going out and getting drunk every Thursday?"

Nick shrugged, plucking up the bottle the bartender had left and pouring himself a fresh glass. "Miss Hopps, I've barely spent a day around your family and I'm already reeling from the exhaustion. If that's what you put up with twenty-four-seven then I'm surprised you don't come here every day of the week," he chuckled fondly, shaking his head. "I mean, I've been living with Judy for all of four months and I'm already wondering how you guys dealt with her. Every morning she's up at five-thirty, chomping at the bit and she doesn't settle down 'till we get back home. It's exhausting..." he complained tenderly, words tempered with love.

Bonnie couldn't help but relate, surprising herself with a hearty chuckle of agreement. "Oh, trust me, I know. Judy... she was a wild one in her youth. You know that one kid who's always trying to climb on things? Well, that was our Judy. Back in the day she used to get into all sorts of trouble - that little bunny's been through more bumps and scrapes than you'd believe - used to be she'd have a new Band-Aid for every day of the week."

"Oh, I'd believe it, alright," said Nick, refilling his glass before promptly emptying it. Bonnie found herself joining in, swigging back the last of her beer and sampling some of the vibrantly coloured firewater. It burned pleasantly at the back of her throat and stoked a warm flame in her belly. "Hell, I've been _living_ it ever since I met her. As things used to be I was raking in two, three hundred dollars a day melting down popsicles. Nowadays I count myself lucky to make it through the morning without a trip to the emergency room..." he snickered to himself, as if caught up I some fond memory of his.

"I wouldn't trade it for the world, you know," he said, suddenly serious. "Your daughter... She's the best mammal I know," he leaned his back into the counter, chest heaving with a contented sigh, eyes glassy with the onset of drunkenness. "And being with her - all the small ups and downs aside - well, it's a little like being in heaven."

Maybe it was the plain, straightforward way he said it, or maybe it was the starry, bewitched twinkle in his eye, but from that point on Bonnie knew for an absolute fact that Nick Wilde was head-over-heels in love with her daughter.

She hadn't been sure up until now. Being a mother to as many as she was, she'd grown accustomed to seeing her children bring home brusque young men and femme fatales, convinced they'd stumbled upon their soul mates. She'd shaken the paws, hooves (and on one occasion, trunks) of dozens of mammals, all claiming to have loved one of her kits. Some meant it, others didn't, and over the years Bonnie had become something of an expert of discerning between the two.

Nick meant it, and he meant it with all the passion and conviction one fox could muster. He meant it the same way Stu had meant it when he'd gotten down on one knee in the middle of town square and offered her a ring. With every fibre of his being he loved her daughter, and would do so until his heart gave way or a speeding truck turned him into gut-spaghetti or he choked to death on a peanut. Then he'd love her from that place wherever dead folk went.

Suddenly last night's spying seemed more of a mortal sin than a simple, poor choice of judgment. Her mind reluctantly reached back, replaying the events in her head, trying its hardest to skip over the sloppy, X-rated parts and focus on the ending - Nick embracing Judy sweetly in his arms and lulling her softly to sleep. Getting on as Bonnie might be, her age hadn't dimmed her memory in the slightest, and she could still recall it perfectly. The tender way he'd pulled her to his chest. His hum of satisfaction as Judy nestled her head into the crux of his neck. That small, elated sigh of euphoria as he buried his nose between her ears and breathed in her scent. It'd been one of those simple, raw shows of affection that lovers only shared in private. Something sacred. And she'd defiled it.

A coil of guilt twisted in her stomach, and Bonnie reckoned that she could do with another drink.

* * *

"She used to wear a nose ring?!" exclaimed Nick, finishing off his fifth glass and making a start on his sixth.

"You bet," replied Bonnie, brandishing a photograph and choking on drunken laughter. It was one of the many family photos she kept stuffed in her wallet, this one being of Judy in her rebellious teenage years, draped in black and dappled with piercings. "Told you she'd went through a Goth phase. Honestly, you wouldn't _believe_ how far she took it," she leaned in close, cupped a paw around Nick's ear and whispered. "This one time, she even tried to get her name legally changed to 'Nightshade'."

"Nightsh-" Nick snorted, doubled over and exploded into a hysterical fit of laughter. "Nightshade! I... Oh my God that's _gold!_ " he swiped a tear from his eye, inspecting the photograph closer. "Jeez, she really did go all-out with it, didn't she? I didn't know they made rocker boots that big... and fishnets, too?" he shook his head disbelievingly. "You realise I'm gonna tease her into oblivion for this, right?"

"Oh I'm counting on it. That'll teach her to hide secrets from her mother," she said, delivering a playful punch to Nick's arm. "Really, I can't understand why she didn't tell me about you sooner!"

She understood perfectly. When your boyfriend was a former conman, a fox, and an all around loveable rogue to boot, telling your parents about him was the last thing on your mind. And Stu - God forbid. As loveable as that lug was, he was still racist as sin. Sure, he'd made some progress after they'd partnered up with Gideon Grey, but put him in a room with five or more predators and the rabbit would be searching desperately for an exit. It wasn't his fault - at least, that's what she told herself. Stu's parents hadn't been the most accepting of folks, and they'd coddled him all throughout his childhood. A mindset instilled as thoroughly as that couldn't be changed overnight.

"Oh, y'know," agreed Nick, drawling drunkenly "she's pretty much constantly busy nowadays. Don't take it too personally if she forgets to let you in on the odd secret or two...". He raised his glass to his lips, tasted the alcohol on his tongue, and put it back down, deciding that he'd had enough.

"Yeah... *hic*"

And from the sound of it, so had she. She cursed herself under her breath, having promised herself not to get drunk. Thankfully, Nick appeared to be worse off. He swayed back and forth on his stool, slumping drowsily and steadying himself with a firm paw upon the countertop. He'd had his fill and knew it.

Meaning there'd be no better time than now to break the news...

Right.

She'd been trying and failing to piece together an admission for a while now, rarely getting any further than the first sentence before she started lingering on all the horrible ways things could go wrong. She'd analysed every possible approach and each and every one had ended in utter chaos. Bonnie had convinced herself that Nick would throw a tantrum or deem her some sort of depraved pervert and take off on the first train back to Zootopia with Judy in tow - she paled to imagine what Judy would think of her. Her own mother. A peeping Tom. Picturing her reaction alone was agony.

She fondled at the idea of simply not telling Nick anything - an idea which now seemed more appealing than ever. She'd keep her mouth shut, he'd go back to prying, and hopefully, with a little bit of luck, he'd give up and Bonnie would sweep the whole experience beneath the carpet and keep it there until the end of time.

 _'Or, you know, he'll put two and two together and figure it out on his_ own,' the voice of reason chimed in her head, bitterly truthful. _'Be honest with yourself, Bonnie; you're terrible at keeping secrets and Nick Wilde doesn't seem like the sort of fox who'd give up on a whim. Looks to me like your choices are either tell him now or suffer on a slow burn. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, old girl.'_

 _'... Screw it.'_

"So Nick, you and me... We're friends, right?" she began with a nervous lick of her lips. "I mean, I know we've only known each other for about a day or so, but we've gotten along well enough, right?"

Nick cast her a sideways glance, a spark of suspicion dancing in his eyes behind a mist of drunkenness. He'd picked up on her nervous demeanour almost immediately. Drunk off his tail and still sharp as a needle, it would seem. He weighed her words with a sarcastic hum of deliberation before answering "well, I wouldn't call us besties just yet, but I'd say we're on our way there, yeah."

"And there's no secrets between friends, right?"

Nick's ears perked in interest, his curiosity wetted. "Mrs. Hopps, in my experience there's _always_ secrets amongst friends - but don't let that stop you. You were about to fess up on what's been bugging you since this morning, right?"

The straightforwardness caught her off-guard, fraying her nerves with a jolt of surprise. She composed herself quickly, determined not to let Nick see her squirm. "Uh... Yes, actually,"

The surface of her heart iced over in cold anticipation.

"You see..."

Her pulse hammered in her ears as her cheeks flushed red and her mouth went dry.

"Last night I might've..."

A horrible amalgamation of dread and terror clambered up her spine and fastened its arms around her in a chilling embrace.

"Seen something I shouldn't have."

...

"Mind expanding on that, Miss Hopps?"

"Oh for - I saw you and Judy going at it like a pair of jackrabbits at high noon!" she exploded, the frothing mass of anxiety that'd been broiling away inside of her since last night finally spilling over. "I sneaked a quick peek in on my way back to bed and ended up watching the whole damned thing because I'm a sick, depraved pervert and couldn't look away and I've been thinking about it ever since!"

Bonnie clapped a paw across her mouth, almost as if in afterthought. The realisation of what she'd said crashed over her in a chilling tidal wave of shock, gradually stiffening into dumbstruck horror and disbelief. Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. Words wouldn't come. The world ground to a halt and numbed into the background as a cold, nameless emotion rose from the depths of her belly, filled her chest and condensed on her tongue in a sour, metallic taste.

Shit.

Nick blinked, looked down into his glass and tossed it back with a casual indifference. His silence weighed down on bonnie more than words ever could. Finally, after what seemed to be a thousand forevers, Nick spoke.

"That's it?"

And like that, the world decided to start moving again. She wasn't picking chunks of glass from her face or nursing bloody bite-marks. She wasn't gathering her teeth from the floor. Nick wasn't raging and yelping indignation down her ear or storming off back to the train station to catch the first trip back to Zootopia. For a moment, Bonnie dared to think that she'd imagined the whole confession. Then Nick spoke again.

"I mean, it's weird, sure - unless watching your kid get busy with it is, like, some kind of creepy bunny thing Judy never bothered telling me about -" he paused, suddenly thoughtful. "And just so we're clear, that's not a thing, right?"

Bonnie wordlessly shook her head, jaw hanging on its hinges.

"Good," he said, lips curdling into a drunken leer. "Rabbit-habits are weird as hell. You know what a 'binky' is? Yeah, well Judy deigned to show me a couple of weeks back... Took me ages to get all that furniture back into place... Anyways, what I'm trying to say here is that I'm not all that bothered. Trust me, I've been caught doing far worse things by _far_ worse mammals than you." he explained as casually as one would discuss the weather.

"You're... Not mad?" asked Bonnie, uncertain whether to be confused or simply relieved.

Nick shrugged. "I'm a little weirded out, I'll admit," he confessed. "I mean, my girlfriend's mom just told me she watched us have sex. That's... well it's up there as one of the more stranger situations I've come across. Mad, though? I dunno. Should I be? Sure it's an invasion of privacy and all, but from what Judy tells me 'privacy' doesn't really count for much around here. Frankly I'm more surprised it got to you as much as it did."

If she hadn't been confused before then she certainly was now. "Surprised it got to- Nick, I watched you use your mouth to... To _do things_..." she trailed off, emphasising her disgust with a shudder. "It's just... off-putting."

"Off-putting? Really?" said Nick incredulously. "Mrs. Hopps, not to cause offence, but you'd be the last person I'd think would be timid when it comes to the hanky-panky."

"What? Why?"

"... _How_ many kids do you have again?"

"Now? Almost three hundred. But what does that-" her cheeks bloomed cherry-red as her mind caught up to her. "Th-that's different! " She defended, going from confused to somewhat miffed in the space of a heartbeat. It was one thing to downplay what _should've_ been a deal-breaker in terms of their relationship, but it was another thing entirely to suggest that she was some... Some kind of freaky, sexual deviant!

"The bird and the bees would disagree," purred Nick, "Last time I checked making babies requires a tangle or two under the sheets, and guessing from how many cottontails you've got hopping around the homestead, I'd say you and Stu have done an awful lot of tangling." the teasing edge oiled its way back into his voice and a devious smile curled menacingly at the sides of his mouth, a smile which she realised with a mounting dread he'd been hiding from the moment they'd began talking. The realisation fell upon her fast and hard, like a swift back-hand to the face.

He'd been expecting this from the beginning.

The easy acceptance of how she'd spied on him, the cool response to her... Explosive... Outburst, the quick and precise way he'd turned the argument on it's head... He'd known - somewhere along the line, maybe halfway through this mornings breakfast, maybe sometime during their visit to Gideon's bakery or maybe from the moment they'd stepped into the cosily decrepit watering hole of The Bouncing Bunny Nick had figured her out and set about turning her night into a living, awkward hell.

She would've been furious had she not spied on him having sex the night before, so instead she settled on 'slightly perturbed'.

"... So how long have you -"

"known you watched me and Judes?" finished Nick, drinking in her surprise with an expression shot through with smug satisfaction. "Ever since you started blushing. I mean, when you think about it, it was a simple matter of deduction, really. One day you're fine, the next you've got a face like a tomato. You saw something overnight that made your cheeks light up like a Christmas tree, and when you think about it, it only ever could've been one thing." the explanation rolled smoothly from his tongue, as if it'd been the simplest thing in the world.

At some point Bonnie had dropped her head into her paws, nursing what felt like an early hangover. "Great. So you knew ever since we started this damned night out..." huffed Bonnie grumpily. "Any reason why you didn't just tell me right off the bat and save us both the trouble?"

"Two words, Mrs. Hopps," said Nick with a smirk, rocking his empty glass between his fingers. "Free drinks!"

Bonnie stared owlishly, eyes drifting between Nick and the bottle of alcohol on the counter next to him, all but drained by the two of them. Her brain did a tally of what they'd drank through the night and how much of that had came out of her pocket.

An entire night's worth of drinking, and Nick hadn't spent so much as a dime.

She couldn't help but burst out laughing.

Hustling son of a bitch.

* * *

Bonnie swayed down the road, concentrating on the seemingly impossible task of putting one foot in front of the other. Nick ambled drunkenly beside her, lurching forwards every third step or so only to catch himself mid-fall and narrowly avoid a face-full of dirt. She couldn't decide which as more funny: his awkward stumbling or his horrific attempts at singing.

"Biiiirds don't just fly... they fall down aaaand get uuuup! Nobody learns- uh... Something-something TRY EVERYTHIIIIIING!"

Bonnie clapped, hysterical with laughter. Nick had been piping pop songs for the last quarter of a mile or so, and for once Bonnie was grateful that they lived so far away from town; he would've woken up the entirety of Bunnyburrows otherwise.

"Bravo, Bravo!" she cheered, nearly doubling up in a fit of giggles as Nick took a theatrical bow, complete with a stately flourish of his tail.

The night had gone on far, far longer than she'd thought it would. Not long after they'd finished getting drunk off their tails Bonnie had made the fatal mistake of letting it slip that there was a karaoke bar nearby. Naturally, as all terrible singers do, Nick had insisted that they go there and sing their hearts out. What ensued was a ballet of stupid, clumsy fun and an entire crowd worth of bunnies laughing their asses off at one particularly sloshed fox.

That should've been the end of it, but then, on their way to the bus station, Nick had caught sight of the local arcade, wreathed in neon and peppered with flashing lights. He'd begged her for "just one round of Space Invaders" and they'd ended up spending a small fortune worth of quarters. Nick had managed to get himself into the top-ten scoreboard in 'Asteroids' and Bonnie had, to her surprise, proven to be a crackshot with a light-gun.

And finally, as they staggered away from the arcade arm-in-arm, Nick had asked, half-jokingly, whether there were any discos nearby. Apparently he'd caught a sudden, aggressive strain of 'disco fever' and the only cure for it was to swagger on down to the closest dance floor and bust out some moves copied straight out of some cheesy seventies musical. It'd been stupid, it'd been goofy and whenever Bonnie thought back to it she cracked up into raunchous laughter anew.

"So Whaddya think?" slurred Nick. "Am I... *Hic* ...Am I rock star material?"

"If I say yes will you stop singing?"

"Maybe, if you butter me up real good."

"Then you're a musical butterfly, Nicky."

Nick gasped delightedly, fluttering his eyelashes and fanning himself with a paw. "Well consider me wooed. Miss Hopps, you never told me you were such a charmer!"

Another gout of laughter spilled from her mouth, and once it started it refused to stop. By the time they'd reached the Hopps estate she was gasping for breaths between chuckles. She stopped by the front door, determined to have the last word of the night - as soon as she stopped giggling, that was.

"Nick, tonight was... Well, It's been a long while since I enjoyed a night as much as I did this one," she admitted, bashfully fondling the set of keys in her paw. "And the whole thing about me... Looking where I wasn't supposed to... Thanks for letting me off easy, Nick."

Nick shrugged, waving her off with an easy smile. "No problem - just make sure to keep it our little secret, alright? Judy would probably die from embarrassment if she ever found out, not to mention she'd kick my ass for not telling her in the first place."

"Our little secret. Right," repeated Bonnie, a tremendous weight lifting from her shoulders. She unlocked the front door and felt the familiar warmth of home-sweet-home coil itself around her, and her eyelids drooped in response. She was tired - tired to the point where a warm bed to cosy up in and a warm husband to squeeze on seemed nothing short of paradise. Lucky for her, she had both waiting for her upstairs. "Well, I'm all set to pack it in and call it a night," she said, stifling a yawn.

"Same here," he said, swaggering towards the stairs, only to pause at their foot and cast a sly wink over his shoulder which was equal parts teasing and seductive.

"And don't worry, I'll make sure to close the door this time round."

For he umpteenth time that night, Bonnie blushed.

* * *

 **Fucking finally.**

 **This was, for lack of a better term, hell to write. Basically my brain decided to lock up on me. Sorry about that.**

 **Anyways, seeing as I've been something of a prick in making you guys wait about a month and a half for an update, I think it's only fair that I treat you. Who here wants a lewd chapter?**


	12. Chapter 12 (lewds)

Judy had heard Nick long before she'd seen him, blurting out Gazelle singles from somewhere up the road leading to the house. She wanted to be angry - She'd explained to him explicitly that she hadn't wanted him going anywhere near alcohol before they'd left for Bunnyburrows - but his drunk rendition of 'Try Everything' was too stupid not to laugh at.

As Nick and her mother were trading goodnights downstairs, Judy was trying her hardest to work herself up into a righteous fury. She'd cautioned him to stay sober, and not only had he tossed her advice into the fire, but he'd invited her mother to join him in pissing on the ashes, as well. It was an affront to her authority in their relationship, an insult to her pride and to be perfectly honest she should've seen it coming from a mile away.

It was no secret that Mom liked to take the odd night or two off to drink away stress, and it was more or less common knowledge around the ZPD that Nick used to frequent... Less than savoury... Establishments. Leaving the two of them together with time to kill was like leaving a stick of dynamite next to a roaring fire; Complain all you want about the aftermath, at the end of the day you really should've had more foresight.

She was still angry though. She _wanted_ to be angry. It helped her ignore the slow, creeping worry snowballing at the back of her mind.

Mom was a talkative drunk. A _very_ talkative drunk. And what would a mother to nigh-on three hundred talk about if not her children? There were things that bunny knew that could very well give Nick all the ammo he needed to tease and torment Judy all the way to the looney bin. Beginning to end her childhood had been packed with embarrassing little stories, and Mom could recite every last one of them down to a tee, from that time she hospitalised herself trying to stuff all those crayons up her nose to that one time she tried to get her name legally changed to-

"Nightshade, you're awake!" exclaimed Nick, swaying through the bedroom door on wobbling legs, lips pinned up in a drunken leer.

shit.

"Nick!" growled Judy, more in horror than anger. "If you ever use that nickname again I swear I'll-"

"Peirce my ears, stud my nose and dress me up in fishnets?" finished Nick with an innocent flutter of his eyelids. She tossed her pillow at him, bullseyeing him in the face. It bounced off of his muzzle without so much as denting his smug expression. That was the face of a fox who'd struck gold and knew it. To Nick teasing was an art form, and he was a master. Putting information like this in the paws of a mammal like him was like slapping a flamethrower into the paws of an arsonist and telling them to go to town. She tried all she could to look furious, all the while reeling with panic on the inside.

"How much did she tell you?" asked Judy, bracing herself for hell on earth and still expecting worse.

"Let's see..." said Nick, listing off the facts on his fingers as he went trough them. "You smoked and drank in school, you dressed like Ozzy Ozbear, your favourite band was a toss up between Led Zoopelin and Black Sabeaver, you're the reason the family car has so many dents in it - the thought of you driving a police cruiser scares the dickens out of your mother, by the way - And finally -" he leaned over and brought his face up close to hers. Close enough for her to smell the thick tang of alcohol clinging to his breath. "- you are, by far, the most _adorable_ goth I've ever seen."

"I-it was the style back then, seriously!" defended Judy, trying to come off as offended but only managing to sound more nervous. Wonderful, he'd seen photographs.

"Easy there, Carrots, I'm not complaining," he said, his voice bubbling into a perpetual giggle. "In fact, I think you should try dressing up more often; you look great in black."

"Just... Ugh. I'll pay you money to never talk about this again."

"Trying to bribe an officer of the law? That's a serious offence, Judes."

"Nick!" growled Judy in a tone which made it perfectly clear that she'd had it up to _here_ with the snarkiness.

"Alright, alright! I'll keep the ribbing at a respectable level - limit myself to the odd joke or three. Would that make you happy?"

"It's a start," huffed Judy, knowing with a bitter certainty that Nick would stretch 'respectable level' to as far as it could possibly go. "But if you call me 'Nightshade' again I'm hauling you back to Zootopia by your tail."

"And just when I was starting to get comfortable with the family..." he sighed, trudging past her towards the bed. As he went his footfalls seemed to get heavier, and by the time he'd reached the bedside he was practically dragging himself across the floor. It was a well kept secret that Nick was nowhere near as energetic as he acted. Beneath prying eyes he was brimming with life from sunrise to sunset, but the moment he ferreted himself away behind closed doors the hardships of the day would all fall upon his shoulders at once and he'd have to fight to keep himself awake long enough to reach the bedroom. Lazily he unbuttoned his shirt and dragged it from his shoulders, weary enough to make the simple act of undressing look exhausting. He began to pull down his pants, and Judy decided to save him the trouble and yank them off herself.

Nick giggled to himself, crossing his legs seductively and propping himself up on an elbow, posing as if he belonged on the front page of a nudie mag. "Couldn't wait to get me in the nude, big girl?" he wooed teasingly.

"Oh har har," Said Judy with a roll of her eyes, secretly hoping that Nick hadn't noticed the lustful glance she'd spared between his legs. At this point in their relationship she'd seen Nick stripped down to his birthday suit on an almost daily basis, yet somehow the hungry flame that'd been lit between her thighs the first time she'd seen him shirtless still managed to stoke itself time and time again whenever she caught so much as a glance at the fox's slender yet masculine frame. Nick, and his sleek sex appeal, aroused her now just as it had the first time.

Perhaps even more, now that she knew what he could do with that heavenly tongue of his...

She clambered into bed next to him, sighing contently as he gathered her in his arms and held her to the warm brazier of his chest. She sensed his thudding heartbeat soften as she snuggled deeper into his embrace; felt his hot breath, scented with alcohol, fall into a calm rhythm. His damp nose made its home between her ears, and she bit back a giggle as it tickled against her fur, taking comfort in the reassuring presence of his scent the same way he took comfort in hers. Nick's playful bullying, and her mother's loose tongue, faded away into the background. Here, bundled between Nick's arms, Judy liked to think herself at peace. Come bedtime, Nick became Judy's very own little Shangri-La built of limber muscles and glossy, orange fur.

"Comfy there, Judes?" said Nick, voice heavy with weariness. "Want me to sing you a little nighty-night song?"

She elbowed him softly in the ribs. "I think I've heard enough of your singing for one night already, choirboy; you were wailing so loud outside that I could hear you from in here. Sounded like someone was murdering a cat. You'd make a terrible Gazelle..."

"I'd make a _fantastic_ Gazelle. Just dress me up in a trampy sequin-dress, throw a couple of pretty-boy tigers my way and put me on a stage. Nobody would be able to tell the difference."

"Uhuh," muttered Judy, trying all she could to fall asleep. Unfortunately, the mental image of Nick scantily clad in a fiery red sequin-dress and dancing around on stage in that goofy 70's Disco Night Fever style of his kept her awake through sheer comedic value alone.

"You know I used to date her, right?"

"Gazelle? Yeah, I heard that one before," she said with a roll of her eyes.

"Hey, I'm serious."

"Sure you are. I hear con-artists are all the rage amongst world famous singers nowadays."

"What? Am I not charming enough to bag myself a pop-star?" he asked, paw gliding from her waist down to her hips and squeezing lightly. The angry beast that was her arousal stirred awake, rising to the promise of sex. Sparks danced between her thighs - tickling at the lips of her womanhood. Were they going to - Was he...? Now? The suddenness had caught her off guard, but she welcomed it all the same.

"Oh you're plenty charming, alright," agreed Judy, laying a palm across his roaming paw and guiding gradually to the rim of her underwear. "Plenty charming..."

"I'm a fox. It's in my nature..." hummed Nick as he pushed his paw down the length of her belly, agonisingly slow and devilishly teasing. Gently he pushed his fingers beneath the cloth barrier of her underwear and drew them tantalisingly along the lips of her womanhood. She shivered in primal delight, anticipation coursing through her veins, thick and hot like magma. She bit back a squeal of delight, squeezing at the paw affectionately. Nick Gradually brought her arousal revving to life, fingers gliding tantalisingly across the surface of her sex.

"Mmph... Oh, Nic-" she cut herself off with a gasp as Nick pushed inside of her. She felt herself go stiff, nerves shot through with hard, electric excitement. Then, with a throaty, rumbling chuckle, Nick began to rub, and she melted into bedsheets with a wet, approving groan.

Oh God, the things he could do with those fingers. The fox was blessed, _blessed_ , she swore. Her hips spasmed erratically as a fierce, angry bolt of excitement scrambled up her spine. Nick's breath was fire against the back of her neck and his voice came out lathered with drunken seduction. "You know, I bet you'd still make a pretty hot goth..."

"Oh, shut up about the- _nnnngh!"_ Judy cut herself off with an ecstatic whine; Nick had brushed her clitoris with the velvety soft pad of his thumb, sending a fresh wave of elation through the currents of her loins in a jittery, tingling heat. She buried her head in the pillow and moaned. She felt Nick's smile as he brought his mouth to her shoulder and peppered it with kisses. He followed up to her neck, and then her cheek, and then finally her ear, fingers still thrusting at her groin, dragging her ever closer to orgasm.

Almost...

Her paws clenched at fistfuls of bedsheets, shivering under the weight of her arousal. The fire between her legs had exploded into an inferno, mercilessly hot and getting hotter with every push of Nick's fingers. She simmered out a low whine, voice dripping with desperation.

 _Almost..._

Her breath caught in her throat, clasped by excitement. There were butterflies in her belly, riled up into a frenzy, panicked by the erratic thundering of her heart. Nick's free paw curled gently around her chin, guiding her head to meet his waiting mouth. He went to plant a kiss on her, but Judy beat him to the punch, thrusting her lips onto his.

 _ALMOST..._

If it hadn't been muffled by Nick's mouth, her scream would've woken up the entire house. Her orgasm tore through her in a storm of ecstasy so powerful that she had to wrap her arms around Nick for purchase, lest the tempest sweep her away completely. Stars twinkled at the corners of her eyes, as if dancing to the tune of her quivering moans and Nick's deep, masculine hum of satisfaction. The storm gradually calmed into a warm, comfortable afterglow, and she sank into the warm and inviting pillow of Nick's chest as the tension drained away from her.

She tensed as the final tremor of her orgasm rumbled between her legs, and then sighed as the satisfaction breezed across her.

She felt... Limber. Relieved. There'd been a weight pressing down on her she'd gotten so used to that she hadn't even realised it was there until Nick had lifted it from her shoulders. "Wow," she said, snuggling into her fox-bed. "That was... Just _wow_..." Nick chuckled proudly, coiling an arm around her waist. "Since when are you so..." Her mind, wandering amidst the afterglow, struggled to find the right word. " _Spontaneous_?"

"Spontaneous? There anything wrong with me wanting to show my little cottontail a good time?" he asked smoothly - too smoothly. If he were talking to anybody else it would've flown far and high over their heads, but after all the time the two of them had spent together, Judy's ability to pick up on the subtle chinks in the fox's emotional armour had been honed to a fine, precise point.

With considerable effort, Judy lifted herself from her little haven upon Nick's chest and propped herself up on an elbow, looking down on him with budding concern. "Nick, what's wrong?" she asked with a disarming caress of his cheek - it was as if she'd brushed away a mask. His cocksure smile sank into a troubled frown, and those confidently shining eyes she'd fallen in love with darkened into uncertainty. Judy found herself taken aback (and perhaps a little bit worried) by the sudden change in Nick's demeanour. Partly because Nick wasn't the sort of guy to ever come off as uncertain, and partly because of how fast he'd gone from cocky, loveable prick to unsettled and stressed boyfriend. Nick had his fair share of quirks, but mood-swings weren't one of them.

"It's... It's something for another time, Carrots, don't worry about it," huffed Nick in a sad sort of way which made Judy worry all the more. His eyes sank to the floor, heavy with something pitiful - perhaps shame. "Just do me a solid and leave it until morning, mm'kay?"

"Orrrr you could stop being so elusive and tell me now," offered Judy - although the stern edge to her voice made it more of an order than an offer. Nick had shaped her into something of a grizzled veteran of situations such as this, and if she'd learned anything from her experience with mopey, tight-lipped foxes, it was that the gentle, here-if-you-need-me approach never worked. If you wanted answers from Nick you'd have to wring them out of him, and more often than not he'd feel better after you did.

For a while he didn't say anything. He simply stared up at the ceiling whilst the gears cranked in his head and the anxiousness began to nibble at the corners of Judy's mind. Usually he'd have caved in by now and would be halfway through pouring his heart out whilst she held his paw and played therapist. Seeing Nick like this, wound up in some internal conflict with himself, scared her. He was hesitating, warring with himself on whether or not he should spill whatever it was he was keeping bottled up in that troubled little mind of his.

"Nick?" she said, now genuinely worried. She lay a paw on his chest and shook him gently, as if rousing him from a dream. "Nick c'mon, talk to me..."

Finally the warring voices in his head came to a ceasefire, and he broke his silence with a long, tired sigh of resignation.

"I guess I'm just uncomfortable, is all." he said, leaning back into his pillow with a weary huff.

"Uncomfortable how?" asked Judy, although she reckoned she already knew the answer. The culture-shock and all the radical changes in scenery were getting to him already, weren't they? Dammit, she _knew_ something like this would happen. Ever since she'd caught that nervous look of his as he'd watched Zootopia disappear over the horizon on the train ride here, she'd been reluctantly waiting for the moment Nick's faux-nonchalant demeanour would crack and all the little insecurities and doubts he had would come bubbling to the surface.

"I dunno... About stuff. Everybody here looks at me like I'm from Mars. Your Dad thinks I'm Ultra-Satan and wants to hang my head over the fireplace. I've spent my whole life surrounded by concrete and falling asleep to the sound of traffic, and now when I look out the window there's nothing but trees, farmland and forests for miles and it's bugging me _way_ more than I thought it would... Take your pick, Carrots."

"My Dad doesn't want to hang your head over a fireplace," scolded Judy. A fox pelt rug, on the other hand, wouldn't have been out of the question, but Nick didn't need to know that. "He's just... defensive when it comes to his kids, is all." She cozied into his side, providing some much-needed comfort. "Trust me, let him get to know you and by the time we leave he'll be begging you to stay."

"Yeah, sure." said Nick flatly with a doubtful roll of his eyes.

"Oh come on, don't be like that. Things aren't nearly as bad as you think they are. I mean, you and Mom go together like peas and carrots, and just between you and me, I think you made a _really_ good impression this morning, cooking everybody breakfast and all. You just need to... I dunno, loosen up, I guess. Be yourself."

"Yeah, but I'm an asshole."

"A _loveable_ asshole." corrected Judy, planting a kiss on his cheek. "Trust me, I know you like the back of my paw, and you're a lot nicer than you think, Mister Wilde."

"I appreciate the kind words, Miss Hopps." Nick eased back into the mattress with a lofty, pent-up hum of satisfaction. Judy felt along the surface of his belly, sleekly defined muscles hardening beneath her fingers like warm, furry cobblestones. She nosed her head under his chin and laid another kiss on his neck, eliciting a soft, throaty purr of appreciation.

Without thinking, her paw inched downwards, drifting gradually towards the more... suggestive parts of Nick's body, guided by that same relentless lust that'd driven her to him countless times before. It stirred inside her, unsatisfied and unwilling to make do with what little Nick had fed it. It was hungry, Nick was willing, and the night was still very, _very_ young.

If Nick was on the brink of sleep before then he was wide awake now. He propped himself up on his elbows, hiding his excitement behind an aroused smirk. "Judes, If this is your idea of helping me unwind, I wholeheartedly approve."

"What can I say? you're irresistible. Besides, It's not like you're the only one who had a long day; whilst you were sitting on your ass and getting drunk with my Mom, I was helping Dad drag furniture around our neighbour's house. I need to blow off some steam." she replied matter-of-factly as she hooked her fingers around the rim of his underwear and dragged them down to his knees.

"I'll have you know there was karaoke and dancing as well."

"Please, I feel sorry enough for Mom as it is, don't tell me that she had to sit through your God-awful singing and dancing, too."

"I dance like a butterfly, Carrots,"

"You dance like a bull in a china store, and don't pretend like you don't know bad your singing is," she said between kisses. Her lips worked against his, tongues tangling together in playful dance as she pawed at his stiffening manhood. A soft rumble of laughter passed from his mouth into hers, and she felt his lips pull into a cocksure smile as she kissed them.

"Yeah I know," he said, paws laying their warm palms upon her shoulders and sliding down the length of her body, leaving hot, jittering excitement in their wake. "But don't pretend you don't like it anyways."

In a heartbeat Nick's paws went from sweet caresses to a gentle yet firm grip round her hips, and the laughter that'd been mumbling at the back of his throat roared into a deep rumble of bare, primal lust. She could feel the hackles along his back prickle beneath her paw as they rose to attention, see the change in his eyes as the stirring mystery and allure that filled them caught on the spark of some deep-rooted, animalistic urge and come alight with savage hunger. She watched, fascinated, as the phantom of some base, unevolved predator from a hundred thousand years ago reared its head within Nick and sized her up as prey.

Was it weird that it turned her on as much as it did?

"You've got that look in your eye..." breathed Judy as fear spiced her arousal. 'Dangerous', warned he voice at the back of her head, yet somehow that drew her to him all the more. Here he was beneath her paws, something deemed off-limits by nature, and here she was taking him anyways. Scandalous. "That look I like..."

Gradually he aligned her hips with his, manhood twitching beneath her eagerly. Judy braced herself with anticipation, and when they finally came together she wasn't able to tell if it was him who pushed himself into her, or her who'd thrust down onto him.

"Nick!" she'd cried. The pleasure was sudden and fierce, a thunderbolt of affection striking up from between her thighs and scrambling across her nerves. Balling her paws into fists of iron around the fur of his chest, she raised her hips from his manhood and rammed herself back down with a soft moan. Nick jerked beneath her as if in shock, a wet whimper of approval simmering from between his lips.

"S-somebody's excite- _oh!"_ he squawked as she cocked her hips and powered into him once again. If the lust she'd felt moments before had been like a flame, then what she was experiencing now was nothing short of a fully-fledged forest fire.

She went to cry out in ecstasy, but clapped a paw to her mouth before it escaped her lips, mindful of her parents two rooms over. The walls between their rooms were thick, but then again, bunnies weren't known for being deaf. She rose herself from Nick, only to gradually edge her way back down, savouring the sparks of pleasure and tickles of excitement which swarmed her as she took him inside of her. Nick's paws groped at her shoulders and pulled her down into a lasting kiss, their tongues fencing as her hips worked him to a climax.

He moaned into her mouth, spasming as if on the cusp of exploding. She pushed her body to his - wound herself into him, and rode him for all she was worth. His moans became higher, his paws shook harder and his heart was a non-stop battering ram against his ribs. She could feel him twitching inside her as he tried all he could to stave off the inevitable, and it made forcing him over the edge all the more satisfying. She broke the seal between their lips to breathe, and Nick managed a submissive whine of pleasure before she locked her mouth with his once again.

He whined again - desperately - as his manhood's pulsing reached its crescendo. Their lips came apart once again, this time long enough for Nick to pant "Oh God, Judy! Judy I love you!" before she brought his face into her chest and held him there in a loving embrace as he came.

She pushed herself down to his hilt and kept him there, her second orgasm of the night racing towards her as Nick emptied himself inside her. It struck her with all the force of a freight train, so hard and so powerful she didn't even have time to scream before it overcame and devoured her. Euphoria swallowed her up, and she collapsed forwards onto the pillow of Nick's chest, barely managing to stay conscious as she rode the waves of her climax. "L-love you too, Nick..." she sighed, not even trying to fight off the crushing exhaustion that piled atop of her as her excitement simmered away and she plunged into the enticing, fuzzy warmth of the afterglow. gently she fell asleep, sheathed between Nick and the mattress.

"Love you more..." said Nick cockily, winding her up in his arms. For a fraction of a moment, something sad passed across his face, and Nick sighed the sorrowful, resigned sigh of a guilty man.

Judy had asked him what was wrong, and he'd given her a half-answer. Stu's scorn and the shock of going from bustling city to bumpkin town in the space of a day was one thing, but there was something far more pressing on his mind.

He laid his head back on his pillow, and thought of his mother.

* * *

Bonnie laid in bed, tired to the point of exhaustion but not quite convinced she should go to sleep just yet. Outside the night was a foreboding sort of dreary, sky scabbed over with clouds as black as smoke and wind howling with the lilt of imminent rain. One of those moody sort of nights she found irresistibly easy to fall asleep to. But when she closed her eyes and burrowed herself deeper into the blankets, the sleep refused to come. She willed it, but nothing came.

A nameless kind of anticipation had seized hold of her when she was making her way to her bedroom, and so far it'd refused to let her go, no matter how hard she willed it to. Her fur prickled with excitement, her belly a bag of giddy butterflies. She breathed in, breathed out, and tried all she could to still her hammering heart.

Stu was beside her, mouth half-open and tongue lolling out in that dopey, adorable way it did whenever he slept. His snore was a soft wheeze, one that'd lulled her to sleep countless times before. She reached out, and brushed his ears back behind his head. She laid herself on her side and looked at her husband in all his clumsy, loveable glory.

He wasn't a handsome rabbit, by any means, but there was a simple sort of innocence to his face that charmed her better than any sharp chin or pretty smile ever could've. His paws were bulky, like a pair of oven mitts, their fur patchy and the skin beneath calloused and rough from work. Nearly twenty-eight years she'd spent married to Stu, and she still couldn't understand how paws so rough could have a touch so soft...

The anticipation coiled inside her like an adder stirred from sleep, and all of a sudden Bonnie could think of nothing else other than the touch of those warm, clumsy paws.

 _'"How many kids do you have?"'_

Nick had asked her that back at the Bouncing Bunny, and she realised only now that it'd been on her mind for the entirety of the night, like gum glued to the heel of a shoe. He'd been questioning why she'd found the sight of him and Judy... doing _things_ together so distressing, and now that she had the time to sit back and mull it over, she found herself questioning it, too. After all, she was no stranger to... to...

 _'Oh for the love of carrots, just come out with it!'_

Sex. She was no stranger to sex. Why, back in the early days of their marriage, it hadn't been uncommon for them to go at it two, maybe three times a night! Sometimes more if she was in the mood! Back in the day the two of them had fit the stereotype of 'horny little bunny' down to a tee, and sweet cheese and crackers, hadn't they been horny... All those lustful nights spent in each others arms, all those scandalous little five-minute quickies that'd ended up lasting for hours, countless moments where they'd taken one another just because they'd wanted to...

... All those precious little respites from the world where they'd cuddled together in the afterglow and told each other how much they loved them...

Out of all their passionate vices, she missed that one the most. That brief moment of bliss as the dust of their lovemaking settled and Stu kissed along her neck and told her without so much as a hint of sarcasm that she was the best thing to ever happen to him. And she'd rest easy knowing that whatever tomorrow would bring, she could handle it because she had the love of good man on her side and a family at her back.

And then, overnight, it'd all stopped.

After the latest in her long line of litters, her womb had, for lack of a better term, packed it in and called it a night. Her paw slipped beneath the bedsheets, brushing against the heavy scar across her belly from where the doctors had cut her children from her. She could remember it as if she'd just woken up on the hospital bed the day after. Pushing through the pain of childbirth, Stu standing diligently at her side, giving her strength, the dawning horror as she felt something twist and snap inside her and the mind-breaking agony that followed, the doctors pushing Stu aside and strapping a mask over her face, the glint of their scalpels under the white surgery lights...

And then she'd woken up, and found four beautiful, baby bunnies sleeping soundly in her arms.

Whatever cost those four little bunnies had came at, it'd been worth it. She would never birth another child, the scar across her belly would look horrendous and the painkillers she'd had to take over the next three months would do nothing to mask the lingering pain of her caesarean births but when she looked at those newborn kits none of that seemed to matter.

To this day, Bonnie stood by her belief that the things she'd lost on that operating table were a small price to pay for her newest litter: Janice, Diego, Roland and Rachel. The doctors had told her of the risks halfway through her pregnancy, how her body was getting older and the last thing she needed at her age were four kits in her belly. The fact that all four of them had come out healthy was lucky, and the fact that she'd survived the surgery involved was nothing short of a miracle. However, she hadn't grasped that the changes within her body would change her relationship with Stu until the day he'd pushed her back home on a wheelchair.

During her long, painful recovery, Stu had effectively treated her as if she were made of glass. He'd warned the kids about playing too rough with her, he'd spent ages arranging pillows on the bed so she'd be sleeping in _just_ the right position, he'd escorted her everywhere apart from the bathroom (and she only had that to herself due to her upmost insistence), he'd checked over every meal she ate and every drink she drank to make sure that she was getting all the vitamins she needed - he'd even tried spoon-feeding her one time, but a hard stare had nipped that right in the bud.

And he'd barely touched her once.

Well, that wasn't exactly true; he'd touched her plenty. Getting from her wheelchair to their bed was a bit of a struggle, considering she rarely had the strength to stand, and Stu was regularly helping her get up and about. What she meant was that he never touched her intimately. When he laid his paws on her, he acted as if he were handling eggshells, and one wrong move would break her in two. He'd still kissed her on occasion, but his lips had been so light and delicate upon hers that it could neer be considered anything other than a quick peck on the mouth. When he hugged her, he hadn't dared to so much as squeeze, lest she somehow crumble to dust in his arms.

Time passed, she'd gotten better, but Stu had never quite lost that nervous edge to his touch. Instead of going back to his fumbling embraces and deep, clumsy kisses, that intricate fear of hurting her had found a nice spot in the back of his mind to hunker down and call home. Or at least, that's what she liked to think. God help her if he found her unattractive - for a middle aged woman who'd gone through countless pregnancies and spent her days looking after hordes of restless children, she reckoned she looked alright.

She reached out, and ran a paw down the side of Stu's face. He came awake gently, with a soft groan under his breath. Blinking the sleep from his eyes, he lazily rolled to face her. "What's up, Bon?" he said, yawning.

"Stu... Make love to me..."

She saw the surprise ghost its way across his face before he covered it up with poorly feigned indifference. "What was that, Hon?" he asked, pretending he hadn't heard her. He'd heard her just fine. He might've been old, but those ears of his were still as sharp as ever. Really he was just hoping that she'd change her mind in the heat of the moment; give him a quaint "Oh, nothing dear" so he cold go back to sleep and pretend nothing had happened. It made her feel like a fool, and all of a sudden she regretted waking him, bringing up the subject of sex or even letting it worm its way into her mind to begin with. It wasn't stupid, was it? Asking for sex like that, out of the blue? Dammit, why was she asking herself this _now?_

She spoke again, clearer. "It's just... It's been a long while since we've... _done_ anything together, and I was wondering if..." she trailed off.

"Oh." Stu said, clearing his throat reluctantly. "Bon... It's been a real long day, and it's not that I don't want to-"

"Right, sorry, it was a stupid idea." she said, ending the conversation there and then. Asking was embarrassing enough, and she paled to think of what having Stu nervously laying out all the reasons as to why they couldn't 'do the deed' tonight would do to her self esteem. Right now She wanted nothing more in the world than for Stu to just roll over, go back to sleep and forget she'd said anything.

"Thankfully, Stu did exactly that. "... Tomorrow night, I promise." he said, Sparing her a guilty glance over his shoulder before effortlessly going back to sleep. There wasn't a doubt in Bonnie's mind that tomorrow he'd say the exact same thing.

She lay her head back into her pillow, closed her eyes and tried once again to sleep.

Only she couldn't. The anticipation was still there, unsatisfied, like a bad itch that bonnie was beginning to think she'd never get a chance to scratch.

* * *

 **Come on, admit it. You thought I was dead.**

 **Sorry about this taking such an ungodly long time. Someone in my family ran into some medical problems and I had to take some time off and I won't bore you with all the minute details. Long story short: I'm back and ready to write.**


	13. Chapter 13

_Dear Nick,_

 _It's harder than you think it'd be, being on your own. When you left there wasn't a soul in the world for me to confide in. All the old faces I'd grown up with had packed up and moved when the businesses relocated to the commercial areas, my mom and dad have been pushing up daisies for donkey's years and the man I loved died back on a park bench decades ago. Our street used to be one of the busiest on the block. Now I can count the mammals who live here on one paw. Our little corner of Zootopia is dying, and I'm the only one left who knew it well enough to mourn._

 _I'm not a lonely widow by choice, you know. I've tried finding somebody else. Used all those fancy websites you see advertised on TV, tried speed-dating, frequented all the little get-togethers our community used to have before everything closed down... None of it worked out. Sure, I met men, and sure, some of them were nice - some of them were lovely, in fact - but none of them were your father. Whenever they flirted, joked or went to kiss me, all I could think about was how Robert did it better. How everything about him had just_ clicked _with me. I gave my heart to a man who died years ago, and I'm never getting it back._

 _I can still remember how he left me. As if it were yesterday... as if he were still snuggled up next to me on that rusty bench where he sat down to die._

 _It'd been halfway through the summer holidays, and Robert had bought you this tacky, two dollar kite from that discount store two blocks down the road. It was a piece of crap. You could've made your own out of a pair of twigs, a leaf of paper and a length of twine and it would've probably flown twice as well, but you loved it all the same. How either of you expected it to fly was beyond me; It'd been the middle of summer, and there hadn't been so much as a breeze all day. Still, we took you to the park, and your father and you spent the whole day sprinting across the green with your crappy two-bit kite in tow, trying to get it airborne. Looking back on it now, I'd say that was probably one of the best moments of my life. The sun had been shining, there wasn't a cloud in the sky and everything just felt as if it had clicked - as if I were exactly where I was meant to be; sitting on some old park bench watching my beautiful son and my loving husband run around in circles like a pair of crazies._

 _Then, as if by magic, your kite took off. A gust of wind came from nowhere and carried it off the ground. You cheered and hopped from foot to foot like the excited little child you were, whilst me and your dad stared after the kite I swore couldn't fly as it danced its way into the air. Then Robert threw his arms up and laughed that adorable, boyish laugh of his._

 _And then one of his arms fell back down to his side, as if he were a puppet and someone had just cut the strings. He stared at it, still giggling, prodding at it with his finger. "Ain't that the strangest thing," he said, walking over to the bench and plopping himself next to me with a tired grunt. "The strangest thing..." he trailed off, staring at his limp arm with a curious sort of fascination, smile still lingering at his lips._

 _It took a little while for me to realise he wasn't staring - he was just dead. He'd died right there by my side, and he'd done it so quietly that you were still circling the park with your kite, giggling childishly as the heat left your father's body._

 _I can't remember much else after that. Maybe because I don't want to. It'd been a lovely day and a lovely way to die and I don't want to recall all the screaming and the tears that came next. I want to remember Robert as he was: laughing and hopping around like a fool, having the time of his life with his little boy._ _Try to remember him like that too, Nick. I know you were young at it was all so long ago, but you've got to keep his memory alive. Because after the ones we love leave us, that's all we'll have left of them._

 _Believe me, I've had experience._

 _Love,_

 _Mom._

* * *

The kite tugged the string from his paws and tore away into the clear, afternoon sky, swept into the heavens by the breeze that'd gathered from nowhere. He chased after it, little legs pounding on grass still glossy with dew from the morning's rain and lungs heaving in air as cool and as fresh as mint. The summer heat was like a soft embrace, the sunlight like powdered gold. It was the sort of day that made him glad to be alive.

The kite dove into the sunset and crashed gracelessly into a bush. Behind him his father still cheered him on, laughing like a madman.

Glad to be alive...

He brimmed with energy - a raw, uncut joy pumping through his veins which demanded that he move. Run. Jump. Dance. Anything other than stand still. By the time he reached the kite, he could've easily snapped it up in his jaws and shredded it as if it were prey.

Behind him, his father stopped cheering, and his mother began to scream, and he realised that his legs weren't carrying him towards the kite,but away from his parents. Dread clawed at the pit of his stomach as their heavy footfalls came thundering up behind him, like that of a monster's. He pumped his legs harder, forced himself forwards even as the world tried its best to push him back.

He ran. He ran until the grass turned to tarmac beneath his feet and that summer's day with his parents was naught but a distant memory. Somewhere off in the distance, his mother still called for him, terrified and alone, just like him.

He wanted to run back. Run back and dive into her arms and let her tell him everything was going to be okay. But after all that time running, he had gotten old, and the innocence of his childhood was nothing but a distant memory, dead and buried in a grave he'd dug with lie and deciept. So he kept running. And running and running and running and...

* * *

Nick opened his eyes, forcing a wavering exhale through clenched teeth. His heartbeat was thunder in his ears, and despite the bedsheets piled atop of him, he cold enough to have worked up a shiver. His paws were balled into fists, desperately clasping blankets to his breast and trembling so intensely that he swore that he could feel the bones rattling against one another.

Something moved against him, and a tight, desperate whimper quivered from between his lips. For a moment he was entangled in panic, set to dart from beneath the covers and-

Judy. Just Judy. Thank God, it was just Judy.

 _'Get a grip. It was a dream. Just a dream. Breathe... Breathe...'_

Nick breathed. Swallowed the lump in his throat. Breathed again. Why couldn't he stop his paws from shaking? Was he crying? He brought a shaking finger to his eye and hastily rubbed away the tears. Beside him Judy squeezed at his arm, snoring gently, and his trembling paws slowly eased into a standstill.

He sighed, and the cold spike of panic dislodged itself from his heart. Nothing but a dream. That was all... Nothing but a dream...

He wrapped an arm around Judy's sleeping form and coaxed her closer. Unconsciously she fumbled for a better grip, settling on an arm around his torso. She nuzzled her head into his neck before easing back into deep sleep. Nick hugged her tighter, afraid of what might happen if he were to let go. He felt as if he were a sailor amidst a broiling ocean, and Judy was the gnarled hunk of driftwood which stopped the cold, black depths of the sea from swallowing him up entirely.

In other words, he was frightened. More frightened then he had any right to be. In a house packed wall-to-wall with rabbits, he felt awfully alone.

Gradually his nerves began to settle, and the slow rhythmic sigh of Judy's breathing helped him ease his way back to calamity, but the dream was still there, stabbing at the back of his mind like a splinter that refused to come out no matter how much he picked at it. There'd be no more rest tonight, of that he could be certain. He'd been suffering through this very same dream for years now, and he knew it well enough by now to know that getting back to sleep was a hopeless endeavour.

 _'In that case, guess there's not much of a reason to stay in bed now, is there?'_

He eased his way out of Judy's arms, careful not to wake her, before slipping noislessly out of the bedroom and making his way into the kitchen - nightmares made him hungry, and he was dying for something to gnaw on - if only to occupy himself. He stopped mid-stride when he noticed a light at the end of the hallway. Somebody must've gotten the same idea as him. He slinked up to the corner and peeked into the kitchen. There, framed in the light cast from the open door of the fridge, was Bonnie. In one paw she held a freshly made sandwich, and with the other she was rummaging through the contents of the fridge's lower draws.

"Can't sleep either?" he asked.

Bonnie jumped in surprise, cracking her forehead against the top of the fridge with a meaty *thunk*. "Nick!" she exclaimed, bolting upright in shock before doubling back over again in pain. "Ow... Didn't your parents ever tell you it was impolite to sneak up on people?"

"Must've missed that lesson," he said casually.

Bonnie turned around, still nursing the spot on her forehead. "Well, maybe you could - _sweet cheese and crackers!"_

"What? What's-" He looked down, following Bonnie's bulging stare. Naked. He was naked. Why was he naked? He'd been so hectic in his fervor to get out of the bedroom that he'd forgone getting dressed. Whoops, silly him. Now he was flashing his girlfriend's mother. "Oh, right. Sorry, wasn't expecting to run into anyone out here and -"

"It's fine! It's fine, really. Just... Just go put something on, would you?" she pleaded, squeezing her eyes shut as if the sight of him naked had been something akin to a blinding light.

"I uh, didn't pack a nightgown..."

"Nick!"

"Alright, alright, I'll throw a shirt on or something, gimmie a minute." he said, ducking back into the hallway with his cheeks flushed and his tail tucked firmly between his legs, contemplating just how wrong it was that he'd now given his girlfriend's mother both a sex show and a striptease. It went without saying that Judy was never hearing a word about this. She was nervous as it was, and that sort of weight on her mind would probably send her packing for the loonie bin. He crept back into the bedroom and plucked his clothes up from the floor, careful not to wake Judy.

A couple of minutes later he sheepishly dragged his feet back to the kitchen, a couple of shades redder and a whole lot less naked. Bonnie had sat herself by the table, gnawing at a carrot. She blushed at the awkward smile of apology he offered, and winced as he took another carrot from the fridge and pulled up a chair to sit opposite her. Nick doubted that she wanted to see any more of him than she already had tonight, but there as no one else to talk to and the last thing he wanted to be right now was alone.

"So... Can't sleep?" he asked, reasoning that if he just kept on talking as if nothing had happened then the whole 'I just saw your dick' thing would just sweep itself under the rug.

Thankfully Bonnie seemed to have the same idea as him. "No. I have trouble sleeping..." she paused, chewing the inside of her cheek as she groggily sought for an end to her sentence. Her ear twitched as the wind howled wolfishly outside, and Bonnie had found her answer. "... On windy nights. The noise keeps me up."

It was so obvious a lie that she may as well have just said 'I don't want to tell you', but Nick was too tired and too shaken to bother calling her out on it. The nightmare was still running circles around his head, its black claws pushing ever deeper into his mind. Had he not drank himself into a stupor once tonight already, he would've been tempted to have a look at what Bonnie and Stu kept in their liquor cabinet. As it was, he was still partly reeling from his and Bonnie's night out, and the thought of alcohol alone was enough to make him queasy.

"So... Why are you-"

"Bad dreams," said Nick with a casual disinterest, hoping that the tone would be enough to let it slide under her nose.

It didn't. Bonnie's weary face had animated itself with motherly concern the moment the words had left his mouth. She leaned forwards in her chair attentively, ears perked and eyes glistening over with a pitiful shimmer of compassion. It was the sort of look that a parent would give a child who'd come home tearful over a scraped knee. "Well, do you... want to talk about it?" she asked, voice dotted with a few quivering notes of uncertainty, as if she wasn't sure if it were a question she should be asking.

Or perhaps he was overthinking it, and she was just looking for a way to kill off the awkward silence.

Nick was about to blow her off with a relaxed wave and a nonchalant shake of his head before he realised that he _did_ want to talk about it. He'd had these nightmares for years, and not once had he told another soul. Not Judy, not Finnick, not anyone. Talking about his nightmares would inevitably lead to him talking about his mother, and he... Well, he didn't talk about his mother. There were more than a few cans of worms waiting behind that door, and he wasn't eager to start opening any of them up. Especially not now, here, in front of Judy's family. A while back he'd resolved to fill Judy in on all the details of his childhood as soon as he was ready, and not a moment sooner. When would he be ready?

Never, probably.

"Maybe... another time." he said, and to his surprise he found that the gradual, encroaching feeling of unease that'd been crawling up his back had worked its way into his voice.

Bonnie frowned, and he could tell from the disappointed droop of her ears that her proposal hadn't just been conversation for the sake of conversation, and that she'd been itching for a little heart-to-heart talk with him. It didn't surprise him. From what he'd saw of Bonnie so far, he pegged her as a helper by nature; the sort of person who'd be there with a shoulder to cry on when things got a little too rough. He liked to think that the attitude was synonymous with parenthood.

"Are you sure?" she asked as she subconsciously slid her paw across the table to clasp at his wrist, her grip gentle yet reassuringly firm. "You know, bad dreams usually happen for a reason. If something's bothering you, then... Well, it doesn't do you any good to keep it bottled up inside."

The cold rational, thinker inside of him was tugging at the back of his collar, methodically listing all of the reasons why he should pull his wrist away from Bonnie's soothing grasp, give her a sort and sweet 'goodnight' and hightail it back to the bedroom before he started telling things that were best kept secret.

The other part of him, however - the little boy still running from a childhood that'd been snapping at his heels for as long as he could remember - yearned for a shoulder to lean on. He wanted to talk about his mother, about his father, and about all the ups and downs he'd weathered as the cold, unfeeling streets of Zootopia had hammered and twisted and defiled a lost little boy into a back alley conman with a taste for cynicism.

Both parts agreed that they should've told Judy a long, long time ago. Damn him, he should have told her the second he realised he loved her... Why hadn't he? Fear, mostly. Fear that she'd look at him and see a man different from the one she'd fell in love with. Fear that she'd resent him - perhaps even hate him, considering how highly she valued family. Fear And shame.

Crushing, relentless shame that he'd never had the guts to go back home and tell his own mother how sorry he was for leaving her.

"Bonnie? You... Do you think you'd be able to keep a secret?"

* * *

 _Bet you thought I was dead, didn't ya?_

 _sorry about the massive delay,_ _I'll try my best to make it up to you guys._


End file.
